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UNDER MANY 
FLAGS 



BY 

KATHARINE SCHERER CRONK 

M 
AND 

ELSIE SINGMASTER fi 



NEW YORK 
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT 
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 



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COPYRIGHT 192 1 BY 

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE 

UNITED STATES AND CANADA 



OCT -I 1921 



©CU624594 



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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I A Baker by Necessity 1 

Cyrus Hamlin of Turkey: statesman 
and educator 

II The Man with a Million Bibles 16 
Hugh Tucker of Brazil: Christian 
social service leader and agent of 
the American Bible Society 

III The Story of Poit 31 

Barbrooke Grubb of Paraguay: ex- 
plorer and general missionary 

IV Tree-Not-Shaken-By-The-Wind 48 

Fred Hope of West Africa: indus- 
trial expert 

V When Mary was Afraid 67 

Mary Slessor of Nigeria: teacher 
and the "White Queen of Oko- 
yong" 

VI The Boy for Whom No One Cared 84 
David Day of Liberia : general mis- 
sionary 

VII Under Two Flags 99 

Jennie Crawford of China: nurse 
VIII Sixty-six Days with Bandits 116 

Albert Shelton of the Tibetan Bor- 
der : pioneer and physician 



ILLUSTEATIONS 

PAGE 

Athletics at Beirut University Frontispiece J 

Eobert College 7 

Hugh C. Tucker 19 

Playground in Eio de Janiero 29- 

Chaco Indian girls 35 u 

Barbrooke Grubb and Indians 43 

The village drum in Africa 53 „ 

Chair making in Africa 59 

Fred Hope 65 

An African village 73 

Dr. Day's mission and coffee industry 91 

Jennie Crawford at work 109 

Travel in Tibet 117 

Dr. Shelton at work 121 

Dr. Shelton and friends in Tibet 131 



FOREWORD 

In olden days kings and emperors sent their 
armies to conquer weaker nations. As soon as 
the victory was won, the flag of the vanquished 
was torn down, and the flag of the victor was 
raised. 

Two thousand years ago a new king sent his 
army into the world. It was a small army with 
no guns and no battleships, and in it were only 
twelve men. They were commanded to go first 
to the lands nearest to them and then out ' ' into 
all the world.' ' 

They were not to tear down any flags, but 
they were to raise the banner of their Leader 
above all other flags. There was on it a new 
device, a Cross, which signified that the king 
was a King of Love. His commands were such 
as no other conqueror had ever given: 

Teach All Nations 
Heal the Sick 
Cleanse the Leper 
Feed the Hungry 
Clothe the Naked 
Preach the Gospel 

The enemies against whom His soldiers were 
to fight were not human beings, however wicked 



FOREWORD 

and depraved they might be, but ignorance and 
poverty and superstition and hunger, which 
made people wicked. 

The army did not long number only twelve 
men; it soon grew to hundreds and thousands. 
Of the soldiers some were shipwrecked, some 
were stoned, some faced lions and tigers and 
poisonous serpents; but they all did the King's 
work. They preached the gospel, not only from 
pulpits, but in schools and hospitals and on the 
farm. They taught men how to make better 
homes, and to raise more food; they healed 
the sick and comforted the dying by telling them 
of Heaven. Under many flags they fought, but 
by their lives and their teachings they lifted 
the flag of their Leader above all. 

It is of a few of these brave men and women 

that this book tells. The authors hope that the 

boys and girls who read it will enlist in this 

army. 

k. s. c. 

E. S. 
March, 1921. 



A BAKER BY NECESSITY 

It was muster day in Maine, and little Cyrus 
Hamlin was about to start from the farm on 
which he lived with his mother and brother to 
town where he would see the regiment hold a 
sham battle. He had expected his brother to 
go with him, but he was ill. As Cyrus started 
away alone, his mother said: 

"Here are seven cents to buy gingerbread 
with. Perhaps you will put a cent in the mis- 
sionary box as you go by Mrs. Farrar's house.' ' 

Cyrus thought he had a great deal of money. 
Seven cents in those days were as much as fifty 
now, and they would buy a good deal for a small 
boy. He could easily spare a little for the 
missionary box. 

As he went along he tried to decide whether 
he should put one cent or two into the box, and 
he wished his mother had said definitely either 
one cent or two and had not given him a choice. 
Finally he decided on two. Then a voice within 
him said, 

"Well, Cyrus! Five cents for yourself and 
only two for the heathen !" 

He decided that he would put in three cents. 

l 



Z UNDER MANY FLAGS 

By this time he came to Mrs. Farrar's house 
and there was the box. Was it right to keep 
three cents for himself and give only four to 
the heathen! He stood staring and thinking, 
thinking, thinking. At last he grew tired trying 
to decide, and what do you suppose he did? Into 
the missionary box went every penny! 

All day- long he trotted round watching the 
soldiers, listening to the bands, and having a 
good time. But he didn't go near any refresh- 
ment tables. Late in the afternoon he made for 
home and burst into the house crying out: 

"Mother! I'm as hungry as a bear! I 
haven 't had a mouthful today. ' ' 

His mother was astonished. 

"Did you lose the money I gave you I" 

"No," said Cyrus. "But you didn't give it 
to me right. It wouldn't divide equally, so I 
dropped it all in." 

"You poor boy!" said Mrs. Hamlin, half 
laughing, half crying. "Just a minute and you 
shall have your supper!" 

Several years later Gyrus thought earnestly 
about another problem. He and his brother had 
all they could do to keep the farm going. There 
was no money to buy new farm implements, no 
money even to keep them in order. Gradually 
they wore out, and after a while the yoke for 



A BAKER BY NECESSITY 6 

the oxen went to pieces. The making of an 
ox-yoke is a very difficult matter for a grown 
man and almost impossible for two boys thir- 
teen and fifteen years old. But Cyrus and his 
brother examined the old yoke and looked at 
each other and then back at the yoke. 

"We can't buy one," said the brother. 

"We'll make one!" said Cyrus. 

They cut down a birch tree and set to work. 
They did not have the proper tools, but they 
borrowed them — and you may be sure they re- 
turned them in good shape, — and they put in 
all their spare time for days. By and by the 
yoke was hewn out, and they scraped it with 
glass and polished it with a dry stick. But alas, 
when they bored the holes for the bows to fit 
into; they put them in the wrong place! 

Did this discourage them? Only for a min- 
ute. They knit their brows, they looked at each 
other and then at the ruined yoke, and they 
went and cut down another tree. This time they 
succeeded in making a perfect yoke, and when 
it was painted a bright red, they were the hap- 
piest boys in Maine. 

Still another time Cyrus set his mind on an 
interesting problem. He was now almost a 
man; he had determined to be a missionary, and 
he was studying in the Academy six miles 



4 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

from home. Every other Saturday he walked 
home around Bear Pond and across Hawk 
Mountain. He carried his gun with him, and as 
he went along, he sometimes shot game to take 
to his mother. Once he met a bear, but the bear 
got away. 

The view from the top of the mountain was 
wonderful, and Cyrus had an eye for beauty. 
One day as he turned from a look at the distant 
woods and fields, his eye fell upon an object near 
at hand. At his feet the precipice dropped sud- 
denly a hundred feet and on the very edge hung 
a large boulder. 

He looked at this boulder with interest. One 
Fourth of July the young men in the neighbor- 
hood had gathered to see whether they could 
push it over, but had failed. Cyrus suddenly 
forgot everything but this rock. Could any- 
thing in the world be more delightful than to 
shove the great thing off and hear it go crash- 
ing down? It couldn't do any harm, and it 
would be better than any Fourth of July cele- 
bration ever staged. 

He not only stared at the rock, he examined 
it carefully, and then he thought again. The 
boulder rested on gravel, and if that could be 
cut out, down it would fly. He hurried home 
to tell his brother. 

The next Saturday the two Hamlins and a 



A BAKER BY NECESSITY 

friend met on the mountain and dug away at 
the sandy bed on which the rock lay, but it did 
not move. The next Saturday they came again. 
At supper time it seemed as though they would 
have to give up all hope of finishing that day, 
and they were dreadfully afraid that some one 
would come and complete the work and get the 
credit. 

"Let supper wait!" said they. 

Again they set to work, and presently one of 
them shouted, "It's moving !" 

With a wild leap the boys got out of the way. 
The rock moved slowly at first, then faster and 
faster and in the end it plunged down, striking 
sheets of fire as it flew. Bang! it struck the 
granite cliff and burst into three great frag- 
ments. Swish ! it rushed down on its way to an 
open field below. 

Never were there three happier boys. They 
went home to supper in the twilight, hearing 
the echo of the terrific crash and knowing that 
the great boulder had had to yield to their 
strength and persistence. 

But' the time came when Cyrus Hamlin faced 
problems a thousand times more serious than 
making an ox-yoke or moving a boulder. He 
became a missionary as he had intended and 
was sent to Constantinople. There he taught 



b UNDER MANY FLAGS 

Armenian boys in Bebek Seminary, and it be- 
came the dream of his life to build a college. 

" Education is the way to peace and enlight- 
enment, " he would say. "If we could found 
Christian institutions where we could train 
young men in all professions, then they could 
go out to set an example to their fellow coun- 
trymen and be their leaders." 

He never walked through the narrow streets 
or crossed the Golden Horn without looking all 
round for a suitable location, and he had al- 
ready about twenty in mind. But his dream did 
not come true. In the first place, there was no 
money. In the second place, he had to fill with 
other work all the time he might have spent 
planning for a college. He had to be textbook 
as well as teacher, and he had to make all his 
own apparatus. 

When he moved into a house, he had to repair 
it ; when his poor Armenian students and their 
families were without clothes, he had to find a 
way to cover them. When they were refused 
work by the cruel Turks, he had to find work 
for them. He taught them how to make and sell 
stoves and stove-pipes and various useful 
articles. 

One poor man became insane when he had 
no way of supporting himself and his family 
and believed that he was turned to stone. Just 




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8 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

as soon as Dr. Hamlin gave him work, he was 
cured. Dr. Hamlin suggested to him that it was 
best to make an article for which there was a 
demand. 

"If there are thirteen hundred thousand in- 
habitants in Constantinople, there are thirteen 
hundred million rats," said he. "Make rat 
traps! I'll show you how!" 

Soon the man had to have assistants to sell 
his traps. 

Still more Armenians came for help, and Dr. 
Hamlin had to stop dreaming about his college 
and plan how he could feed them. An idea had 
occurred to him vaguely; now it grew into a 
well-developed scheme. He would teach them 
to make bread. Everybody needed bread, and 
in Constantinople the bread was not good and 
all the work was done by horse-power. He 
would bake by steam. 

The fact that he had never made bread did 
not trouble him in the least. He had never made 
an ox-yoke, or rolled a boulder down a mountain 
until he tried. 

His fellow-missionaries laughed at him, but 
they couldn't laugh him out of his plans, and 
he ordered his machinery from America. The 
difficulties were many, some were serious and 
some funny; but in the end the engine and the 
boiler were set up and everything was in order. 



A BAKER BY NECESSITY V 

The dough was mixed, the oven heated, the 
loaves were moulded; but alas, the bread was 
sour and could not be eaten. Dr. Hamlin ex- 
perimented again and again until one morning 
he had delicious loaves of bread to sell. 

Now he smoothed out his forehead. The 
bakery was successful, the poor Armenian 
Christians had work; again he could devote his 
time to his teaching and could think of his 
college. 

But he was mistaken. England and Russia 
went to war, and to Scutari on the other side of 
the Bosphorus were brought the wounded Eng- 
lish soldiers. Dr. Hamlin looked across the 
water and thought of the suffering boys and 
hated war. He did not think of any effect upon 
himself. But he was to be seriously affected. 

One day an orderly came to the door of the 
Seminary and asked him to come to the hospital 
at the invitation of the chief physician, Dr. 
Mapleton. 

"And what does he want with me?" asked 
Dr. Hamlin. "I'm very busy." 

"He wants to see you about bread." 

"About bread!" repeated Dr. Hamlin, and 
obeyed, wondering. 

In the hospital he found himself in the pres- 
ence of a busy man, so burdened by responsi- 
bilities that he hardly had time to look up. 



10 UNDEK MANY FLAGS 

"Are you Hamlin the baker ?" he asked. 

"I'm Hamlin the missionary.'' 

Dr. Mapleton lifted his head. "That's just 
like everything in this country," he said irri- 
tably. "I send for a baker and get a mission- 
ary! Thank God, I'm not a heathen that I 
should want a missionary!" 

Dr. Hamlin laughed. " But I'm the baker," 
he said. 

"You, the baker!" repeated Dr. Mapleton. 

Dr. Hamlin explained how he had been forced 
into the baking business. 

"Then will you bake bread for our hospital! 
What we get is not fit to eat. Our poor invalids 
won't touch it; they can't. We're in a tight 
place." 

Dr. Hamlin stood with knitted brows. 

"You will, won't you?" said the physician, 
earnestly. 

Dr. Hamlin uttered a fateful "yes." One 
couldn't refuse such a plea as this! In a few 
minutes the contract was signed. He promised 
to furnish two hundred and fifty loaves a day. 
But as he left the hospital he looked around. 
Two hundred and fifty loaves a day! They 
would not go far if all these beds were to be 
filled by patients. It looked as though the whole 
British army were expected. 

Alas, the beds were all needed. First fifty a 



A BAKER BY NECESSITY 11 

day, then a hundred a day, the soldiers were 
carried in from the hospital ships, sick, dying, 
with dreadful wounds. Dr. Hamlin could 
neither teach his Armenians nor dream about 
his college when he had six thousand, then 
twelve thousand loaves of bread to make each 
day. He thought of nothing but baking. 

The poor patients had almost no nursing, and 
his heart ached. He offered to organize a corps 
of nurses for the night when there was no one 
to take care of the helpless invalids, but he was 
refused by the brutal officers. 

Then one morning he went to the hospital and 
heard a strange piece of news. A soldier told 
him, his eyes almost popping from his head in 
his astonishment: 

" Fancy, Mr. Hamlin! Some women have 
come to this hospital. Did you ever hear of such 
a dreadful and improper thing ?" 

' ' What women?" asked Dr. Hamlin. 

"A Miss Florence Nightingale with a force 
of assistants." 

"Good for her!" said Dr. Hamlin. "It's 
time that somebody should come here and do 
something." 

That morning he kept his eyes wider open 
than ever. The Hamlin family were famous 
hero-worshipers; Cyrus's grandfather had 
named six of his boys for heroes. They were 



12 UNDEK MANY FLAGS 

Africanus, for Scipio Africanus, Hannibal, Cy- 
rus, Eleazer, Isaac, and Jacob, and the other 
three, one might mention incidentally, were 
Americus, Asiaticns, and Europus. Here, Dr. 
Hamlin saw, was a real live hero, in the bud at 
least. 

He watched Florence Nightingale moving 
quietly about in the scene of misery and hor- 
ror. The poor lads spent no more lonely nights. 
Every want was attended to. The death-rate 
went steadily down. It was one of the great 
achievements of history, and he had a part in 
it; he baked the only bread Florence Nightin- 
gale would let her sick boys have. 

But still his dream had not come true, and in 
the confusion it seemed to grow more and more 
dim. The war went on, bread had to be baked 
every day, new ovens had to be built, thousands 
of pounds of flour had to be bargained for. 

Presently he had a new occupation — he set 
up a laundry. The clothes of the wounded 
men were filthy, and he offered to have them 
washed. But they were so filthy that the women 
feared to handle them, badly as they needed 
work. The brain which had studied the making 
of an ox-yoke and the pushing off of a boulder 
and the making of bread worked quickly. Out 
of an empty cask Dr. Hamlin made a washing 
machine, and the vermin-filled clothes did not 



A BAKER BY NECESSITY 13 

have to be touched by hand until they were 
clean — a new problem was solved ! His friends 
had told him that he had sixteen professions, 
and now he had another, — that of laundryman ! 

He did not suspect that all the time he was 
baking bread and washing clothes there was 
coming nearer and nearer the fulfilment of his 
dream. He had prayed and hoped that some 
day a rich man would come and see the good 
that might be done by a Christian college. Now 
that good man was at hand, Christopher Eobert, 
an American merchant. 

Mr. Eobert was traveling in the East, and one 
day as he was crossing the Bosphorus he saw a 
boat loaded with loaves of bread. 

"What in the world does this mean?" he 
asked his friends. "That looks like American 
bread. Who bakes it?" 

"A missionary named Hamlin," was the an- 
swer. 

"A missionary who bakes bread!" repeated 
Mr. Eobert. 

"He baked it first to give work to his Arme- 
nian Christians, and when the hospital was 
opened he was persuaded to bake it for the pa- 
tients. It's the best and also the cheapest 
bread ever seen in this part of the world." 

"I should like to meet that man," said Mr. 
Eobert. 



14 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

"That will be an easy matter," said his 
friends. 

But when Mr. Robert met Dr. Hamlin, he 
heard only a little about bread and a great deal 
about another matter. Though no record of 
their conversation has been kept, it must have 
been something like this: 1 

"I'm very much interested in your bread- 
making, Dr. Hamlin." 

"I had no idea what I was getting into," was 
Dr. Hamlin's probable reply. "But it had to 
be done. What I'm chiefly interested in is the 
founding of a Christian college here in Con- 
stantinople." 

"It must have been a tremendous work to 
bake all this bread." 

"It was, but oh, Mr. Robert, what wonderful 
work we could do if we could have a college to 
train young men!" 

"And your laundry enterprise, Dr. Hamlin, 
that must have been the greatest blessing to the 
sick. ' ' 

"It made them more comfortable. If we 
could have a Christian college here, it would 
leaven the whole empire." 

"How did you learn so many trades, Dr. 
Hamlin?" 

"Oh, I picked them up. You see, Mr. Rob- 
jert," Dr. Hamlin repeated his favorite senti- 



A BAKER BY NECESSITY 15 

ment, " education is the way to peace and en- 
lightenment. If we could found a large Chris- 
tian institution where we could train young men 
in all professions, then they could go out to be 
the leaders of their people. " 

It is likely that at this point Mr. Robert gave 
up trying to get information about bread- 
making and laundering and said, with a 
twinkle in his eye, "Well, tell me about your 
college ! ' ' 

Dr. Hamlin took a long breath and began. 
How long he had waited ! But here, please God, 
was a hearer with a receptive heart and a large 
purse. 

Mr. Eobert listened earnestly and his heart 
was moved. What better use could one have 
for one's money than to bring enlightenment 
to this dark corner of the world ? In a few min- 
utes he was not only listening, but helping Dr. 
Hamlin to plan, and within a few years Robert 
College crowned the hill which Dr. Hamlin se- 
lected as the best site he had considered. 

Mr. Robert was a generous man and he 
would undoubtedly have put his ' money to 
good use somewhere, but Robert College would 
not be shining like a star in a dark sky if he had 
not seen Dr. Hamlin's boat-load of bread cross- 
ing the Bosphorus on its way to Florence Night- 
ingale's sick boys. 



II 

THE MAN WITH A MILLION BIBLES 

It was a hot summer day. The people of the 
city of Paracatu in Brazil were standing or 
lounging in groups about the doors of their lit- 
tle houses, which were built close together. 

Children with scant clothing played about in 
the streets. Their bare, brown feet were used 
to the hot pavements. Mothers sat squatted 
in the doorways making lace. One woman was 
beating mandioca for her family's almoco, or 
lunch, while another woman fanned a fire of 
coals on a little round, iron stove. 

Suddenly the children ran back out of the 
street. The women looked up and saw a pro- 
cession of nine mules coming into the city. 
Many trains of mules passed by their doors, but 
this one was different from the others. The 
man who rode on the foremost mule had a very 
fair skin. Biding behind him were three Bra- 
zilian men whose faces were dark like the faces 
of the women who sat in the doorways and the 
children who played in the streets. Five of 
the mules carried packs loaded with a tent, some 
cooking pots and pans, and books. There were 
books not only in the packs on the backs of the 

16 



A MAN WITH A MILLION BIBLES 17 

mules, but more books in the pockets of the 
four men. 

As the procession passed out of sight, the 
women looked curiously to see where the men 
were going to stop, and wondered why they had 
come and what books they carried. 

Towards evening one of the women went 
about among her neighbors to tell the news she 
had heard. 

"The man who rode at the head of the mule 
train is Dr. Hugh Tucker. He comes from 
North America. Tonight he is going to speak 
in the public square. There are many people 
who say that it is the book which he has that 
has made his country great and free.'' 

In the evening a crowd came to the public 
square to hear Dr. Tucker. They asked him 
many questions. Some who had money, or who 
could read, bought Bibles so they could learn 
more for themselves of the things he told them. 
He gave Bibles to those who had no money. 

Dr. Tucker's business was to give the Bible 
to the people of Brazil. For years that was 
what he had been doing. In the beautiful city 
of Rio de Janeiro he had a great store to which 
people came by the hundreds to buy Bibles and 
from which Bibles were sent by mail and by 
colporteurs in all directions. 

These colporteurs, or Bible men, went 



18 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

through the cities of Brazil and far into the 
country. Sometimes they walked, sometimes 
they rode on mules, and sometimes they trav- 
eled in ox-carts. Dr. Tucker himself often rode 
with them, as he did on this trip when they 
stopped at Paracatu. This journey through 
towns and open country lasted for six weeks. 

There were few houses along the rough and 
hilly roads. Now and then long-legged os- 
triches ran across the path before the mules. 
Gaily colored parrots perched on branches of 
the trees; monkeys chattered in the vines be- 
side the small streams; and here and there a 
fox or a tatou ran past. Sometimes the prairie 
with its waving grass stretched before them 
like an ocean. At night they pitched their tent 
beside small streams where the grass grew 
fresh and green. 

One Sunday morning as they rested in front 
of their tent, an ox-cart stopped before them, 
and a man jumped out and asked for a cup of 
coffee. As he drank the coffee, Dr. Tucker 
read to him from the Bible. 

' l Go on, go on, ' ' the man called to his driver. 
"I'll follow later. Never in all my life have 
I heard such strange things as this book tells." 

The next morning the colporteurs were up 
at three o'clock. The moon lighted their way 
as they rode. They stopped at a house for 




Hugh C. Tucker 

Not only did he put the Bible into the pulpits and bookcases of 

Brazil, but its spirit of love and service found expression in the 

hearts of the people, in parks, schools, and playgrounds. 



20 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

breakfast, and Dr. Tucker took out a Bible and 
read from it to their host. 

" No, no, don't stop!" said the man, when 
Dr. Tucker started to help load the mules. 
"Bead more. Let the others load the animals 
while I call my neighbors, that you may read 
to them, too, and tell them what these things 
mean, for they are new and strange to us." 

Every day they met people who asked, 
"Where are you going, and what is this new 
book you carry with you?" 

"How can these things be?" said one man. 
"Is it true that so long as two thousand years 
ago such wonderful things happened and today 
I hear of them for the first time and even yet 
my friends have not heard ? You are slow about 
giving the Bible to my people ! ' ' 

Now Dr. Tucker had thought he was giving 
the Bible to the people of Brazil just as fast as 
he could, but he redoubled his efforts. He sent 
out still more colporteurs. They gathered the 
people in the public squares of the cities and 
read and preached to them, and the people 
listened gladly. Sometimes the colporteurs 
started out with sacks filled with Bibles and 
came back with their sacks full of the images 
the people had been worshiping and had cast 
away when they read, ' ' I am the Lord thy God. 
Thou shalt have no other gods before me." 



A MAN WITH A MILLION BIBLES 21 

Dr. Tucker has given more than a million 
Bibles to Brazil. He presented a Bible to Pres- 
ident Prudenti Moraes on his inauguration day. 
He has found many ways of giving the spirit of 
the Bible in addition to putting the book into 
the hands of the people. He does not wish any- 
one to think that this is a magical book, and that 
it is enough merely to have it. 

When he took Bibles to the sick boatmen 
down in their poor little mud huts by the river- 
side, he found they had no one to care for them 
properly, — there are many thousands of sailors 
coming into the port of Eio every year, — so Dr. 
Tucker became the " seamen's friend.' ' He 
rented a house and made it a Seamen's Home. 
In one year more than ten thousand sailors 
came to his Home. Most of them were glad to 
pay for their meals and beds, but he did not 
turn any away if they were ill or had no money. 
There were free beds and free meals for those 
who needed help, and doctors to care for those 
who were sick, and employment found for those 
who were out of work. 

While he was preaching in the slums of Eio 
he found many people who were poor and sick, 
as there are in all great cities. He went to a 
young Brazilian doctor and asked him to visit 
the homes of the poor people in the slums. 

The young doctor came back and said, "Why, 



22 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

Dr. Tucker, it is almost enough to make anyone 
ill just to go into these homes and see how the 
people live. There are so many dark rooms 
and so little sunlight, and the houses are very 
dirty. In almost every home someone is sick." 
Dr. Tucker remembered how the multitudes 
came to Jesus and were healed, and so he 
thought one of the best ways to give more of 
the Bible to the people was to help those who 
were sick. 

He had stereopticon pictures made which 
showed how tuberculosis might be prevented. 
Then he went to the United States Ambassador 
and to the mayor of Eio and to the president 
of the Board of Health and to other great men 
who could help him and told them he was going 
to give a lecture and wanted them to come and 
sit on the platform. He sent cards out all over 
the city telling how many people had tubercu- 
losis and what they should do to be cured and 
inviting people to his meeting. 

Those who came were so much interested in 
the pictures, that the city officials arranged for 
him to show them to the children in the public 
schools. Then they had him talk to the people 
who gathered in the public squares of the city. 
The government gave him money to fight tuber- 
culosis, and he started a hospital where sick 
people without money could be treated and 



A MAN WITH A MILLION BIBLES 23 

where they could hear and read about Jesus the 
Great Physician. 

Next he started a school for poor children. 
The children wanted to come to school, and Dr. 
Tucker was very happy until he saw how 
strangely they behaved. 

"What can be the matter with them!" he 
asked. "They sit with their hands folded. 
They don 't want to study or even to play. Their 
eyes are dull/' 

He asked the children questions and visited 
their homes to find out why they did not want 
to study or to jump about and play. 

"No wonder my school children sit with their 
hands folded," he said when he came back. 
"They are half starved. Some of them have 
nothing but a cup of coffee and a pickle to eat 
all day." 

He remembered how Jesus had fed those who 
were hungry, so every day he provided a lunch 
of whole wheat mush with milk and sugar. 
Soon the hollow cheeks of the children began 
to get round and rosy, their eyes began to shine, 
and they wanted to run and jump and play. 

"I wish we could feed all the hungry children 
in Eio, ' ' said Dr. Tucker one day. He knew he 
could never get them all in his little school, but 
he thought of another plan — he started a cook- 
ing school to teach the mothers to cook good 



24 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

meals at home. He told tlie gas company about 
his plan, and they gave him the stoves he 
needed. The mothers came with their children, 
and while the children learned reading and writ- 
ing and arithmetic, the mothers learned how to 
prepare food that was better for children than 
coffee and pickles. Dr. Tucker had found an- 
other way to give the Bible to Brazil. 

One day he said, ' ' The Bible tells us to clothe 
the naked, but how can we ever get clothes 
enough for all of the poor people of Brazil!" 

Presently he walked into the office of a sewing 
machine company and told the manager about 
his plan to clothe the naked. 

' ' That would be fine ! ' ' the manager said. 
"Of course the only way to clothe all the poor 
people is to teach them how to make their own 
clothes." 

He sent sewing machines to Dr. Tucker's 
school, and soon the mothers were learning to 
sew. Dr. Tucker had found still another way 
to give the Bible to Brazil. 

Now his school children were well and happy. 
Their cheeks were round and rosy, for they had 
a lunch at school and their mothers gave them 
good food at home. Their clothes were neat 
and clean, their eyes were bright and shining, 
and they were ready to study and play. But 
where should they play? There was no trou- 



A MAN WITH A MILLION BIBLES 25 

ble about a place to study. They could study 
at school or at home, but when they wanted to 
piay there was no place at all. Rio is one of 
the most beautiful cities in the world, and many 
of the people are very wealthy and live in beau- 
tiful homes, but Dr. Tucker's poor little chil- 
dren in the slums lived in houses that were built 
close together right on the street. 

There was a very beautiful park, with lovely 
green grass, but the superintendent of parks 
was very proud of his green grass and had a 
fence of iron rails around it with a sign, ' ' Keep 
off the grass" wherever a child could get in. 

Every time Dr. Tucker saw that park, his 
eyes looked like the eyes of his school children 
when they were hungry. But one day as he 
went through the park, his eyes began to twin- 
kle. He clapped his hands and said to himself, 
" I'll do it!" At once he walked up boldly to 
the mayor of Eio and the superintendent of 
parks. 

"The children have no place to play," he 
said. "Why don't you open up a part of the 
city park for a public playground?" 

The mayor and the superintendent of parks 
were so shocked they could scarcely say a word. 
They were so proud of their beautiful park, 
they had never let people even walk on the 
grass; and now this bold man actually dared 



26 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

to propose that they should put swings and 
teeter boards and tennis courts right where the 
grass was most beautiful ! 

But they could not forget what he said about 
happy children being worth more than beauti- 
ful grass, and one day they drove to Dr. Tuck- 
er's door in a fine automobile and invited him 
to ride with them. They did not ask him where 
he wanted to go, but drove straight to the park. 

"We have decided to do what you ask and 
let you make your playground on one condi- 
tion,' ' announced the mayor. 

"Good!" said Dr. Tucker, "What's the con- 
dition?" 

"That you get all the equipment for a first- 
class playground," answered the superintend- 
ent of parks. 

Dr. Tucker was thinking very fast. "Equip- 
ment for a first-class playground" meant 
swings and bars and teeter boards and tennis 
nets and footballs and ever so many other 
things boys and girls love in a playground. With 
the same twinkle that was in his eyes when he 
looked at the park and said, "I'll do it," he said 
now, "All right, I'll take you up." 

He did not have a single cent in his pocket to 
buy all these things and he did not know where 
he was going to get so much money, but he said 
to himself: 



A MAN WITH A MILLION BIBLES 27 

"I'll look around a bit and see what I can 
see." 

The first thing he saw was some men tearing 
up an old street-car track. He went to the man- 
ager of the street-car company. " What are you 
going to do with those old rails ?" he asked. 
"May I have them?" 

"Yes, I guess so," answered the manager. 

Dr. Tucker said "Thank you" very politely 
and then added, "I'll have to have them shaped 
a little differently and a few holes bored in 
them. Would you mind doing this in your 
shop?" 

The manager said he would do that, too. 
When Dr. Tucker said "Thank you" very po- 
litely again and turned to go, the manager 
asked: "What in the world do you want those 
old rails for?" 

"For swing supports and all sorts of equip- 
ment for the playground." 

He told the manager about his ride with the 
mayor and the superintendent of parks and all 
about the things he was going to make for the 
playground and athletic fields out of those 
lovely old rails. 

' ' Nonsense, man ! ' ' said the manager. ' ' Those 
old rails aren't good enough. Why you ought 
to have the best stuff money can buy for Bra- 
zil's first public playground." 



28 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

"Of course we ought," said Dr. Tucker, "but 
since we don't have the money to buy them with, 
I propose to see what we can make." 

"What would you buy if you did have the 
money?" asked the manager. "Think it over 
and let me know." 

Dr. Tucker went home and got a catalog of 
a New York store. A few days later he went 
into the manager's office with the catalog in 
his hand. The manager was so busy he scarcely 
had time to look up. 

"Are you too busy to look at the things we 
need for the playground?" asked Dr. Tucker. 

"Yes, I am," replied the manager. "You 
just take that catalog and mark what you need, 
and when I go to New York perhaps I can get 
it for you. ' ' 

Dr. Tucker's eyes twinkled twice that time. 
He felt as if his fairy godmother had shown 
him a wonderful palace and told him to help 
himself. He sat down and marked in that cata- 
log the things he knew the boys and girls of 
Eio would have marked if they had held his 
pencil. 

The manager took the catalog to New York 
with him and bought every single article that 
had a mark before it. He paid for them with 
dollars — seven hundred and forty of them — out 
of his own pocket. 




a 

O 
S3 



I s 

• l-l 'I— J 

"a 'd 

PhC 
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30 UNDEK MANY FLAGS 

When the swings and bars and outfits came 
and were set up in the park, the opening day 
was announced. The people came in crowds 
from all over the city. The band played, and 
the flag of Brazil was raised. The mayor made 
a speech, and the children cheered, and then 
they scampered off to swing and slide and bat 
and jump; and the first public playground of 
Brazil was open. 

That evening Dr. Tucker walked down the 
street. He thought of his million Bibles, and 
he thought of his school and his playground 
which put the love of God into visible form. 

"The Bible is coming into Brazil," he said 
to himself. "Not only into the pulpits and into 
bookcases, but its spirit of love and service is 
coming into the parks and schools and the 
streets and, best of all, into the hearts of the 
people. And his own heart was glad. 



in 

THE STOEY OF POIT 

In the interior of South America, with the 
rivers Parana and Paraguay to the east, with 
Argentine to the south, and Bolivia to the west, 
there is a vast, low country called the Gran 
Chaco, about as large as the state of Texas and 
inhabited by Indians. The country is flat and 
there are grass-lands, swamps, and forests of 
palm trees. There are many different animals 
with which the children of the North are not 
familiar but of which they may have seen pic- 
tures, among them the tapir, the marsh deer, the 
otter, the peccary, and the armadillo. There 
are some savage animals such as the jaguar, the 
puma, and a very large wolf with a long mane. 

There are also some of the queerest animals 
in the world, especially the ant-eater, a bow- 
legged creature seven feet long from the tip of 
his snout to the tip of his hairy tail. There is 
a queer little opossum about the size of a mouse, 
with enormous black eyes, fan-like ears, and a 
long tail, which runs about in the trees like a 
squirrel. Most interesting of all is the lungfish 
which can live either in the water or in the air. 
In the wet season he stays in the swamps and 

31 



32 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

eats and eats, and when the dry season comes 
and the swamps disappear, he burrows in the 
ground and lives without eating anything, by 
using up the fat he has stored. 

There are many birds both large and small, 
from great ostriches down to tiny humming- 
birds, and there are insects of all kinds, ants and 
crickets and mosquitoes and beetles and locusts, 
and there are twenty-four different kinds of 
frogs, each with a different croak. 

For many weeks no rain falls, and the In- 
dians have a hare, time to get along ; then when 
the rain comes they have more than they need 
to eat, water-birds, fish, and, by-and-by, their 
harvests. They do not mind having to tramp 
round in deep water, because wet weather 
brings plenty. 

Among the Indians in this strange country 
was a young man named Poit. One morning 
in December Poit awoke with a frightened, anx- 
ious heart. It was not because he was too warm, 
though in December in Chaco the mornings 
are hot, nor because he had not slept comfort- 
ably on his bed on the ground nor because he 
was hungry; it was because he plotted a wicked 
deed. Today Poit planned to do the most dread- 
ful thing anyone can do, he was going to kill his 
best friend, the missionary. 

Though these Indians lived so uncomfortably, 



THE STOKY OF POIT 33 

they did not want to change their ways, and 
they killed everybody who came to explore their 
country or to search for silver or to tell them 
of the love of God. Even soldiers sent to con- 
quer them by force failed because they were 
so fierce and cunning. 

The chief reason for their resistance and 
their cruelty was not wickedness, but ignorance 
and dreadful fear. They were afraid of spirits 
and afraid of witches and wizards. They were 
so afraid that the souls of the dead might come 
and annoy them that whenever anyone died they 
destroyed the village and went to another place 
to live. This wasn't very difficult because their 
houses were made of boughs stuck into the 
ground. They were especially afraid of people 
unlike themselves, and this was the reason they 
killed foreigners. 

In spite of their objections, a little mission 
had been established among them. It was situ- 
ated on the banks of the Paraguay River and its 
influence did not extend very far inland, but it 
was a beginning. The first missionary died as a 
result of his hard work, and there arrived one 
day a new missionary, a tall, slender young 
man, hardly more than a boy in years, whose 
name was Barbrooke Grubb. 

Mr. Grubb was not satisfied to stay along the 
river where he could see only a few of the In- 



34 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

dians, he determined to travel to the interior 
villages. He knew perfectly well that the un- 
dertaking was dangerous. He had heard of the 
explorers and the missionaries whom the In- 
dians had murdered ; he knew that a poor white 
man who had strayed from his companions and 
had taken refuge with them had been slain ; he 
knew that if sickness broke out while he was 
staying in a village, he would be held respon- 
sible and be killed. He knew that if an Indian 
had a bad dream about him, he might kill him. 

Nevertheless, he not only visited the interior 
of the country, but he lived with the Indians for 
months at a time, staying in their villages, eat- 
ing their strange food, hunting and fishing with 
them, so that he might learn all about their ways 
and help them. He went unarmed and unpro- 
tected, saying that he was a messenger of peace. 

He had many thrilling experiences, and some 
that were very funny. Of course he did not 
know the language well at first and he mistook 
the word "evil" for the word "good," and as- 
sured the people that he was a friend of the 
"evil spirit." 

He had many amusing encounters with the 
witch-doctors. You would not think from the 
picture of a Chaco witch-doctor that they could 
frighten anybody, but these natives lived in 
deadly fear of them. Mr. Grubb proved how 



36 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

foolish it was to have faith in them. When a 
witch-doctor claimed to have a charm against 
bullets, Mr. Grubb said: 

"All right; you stand over there and I'll 
shoot at you, and you won't mind a bit." 

The witch-doctor wouldn't hear of this trial, 
and the Indians laughed at him. 

Once Mr. Grubb heard that a witch-doctor 
was taking needles out of his patients' bodies, 
and he proved that the witch-doctor bought all 
the needles from him and that the cure was a 
pretense. 

Some of the Indians were very smart. There 
was one called Pinse-apawa, who came into Mr. 
Grubb 's tent one day just as Mr. Grubb was 
taking some medicine. This medicine had an 
alcoholic smell though it had a dreadfully bitter 
taste, so bitter that you could hardly swallow 
it. Pinse-apawa smelled the odor of liquor. 

"Ah!" he said. "You won't let us drink 
liquor, but when you are here alone you take 
it yourself!" 

"Have some," invited Mr. Grubb. 

Poor Pinse-apawa took a big swallow and 
after that he knew the difference between liquor 
and medicine. 

Now Poit, who opened his eyes on a warm 
December morning intending to murder Mr. 



THE STORY OF POIT 



37 



Grubb was not a witch-doctor ; lie was a clever, 
intelligent Indian, and when he was good, he 
was a great help. We do not like to call him 
a bad Indian, even though he was to do snch a 
dreadful deed. Though he had had every chance 
under Mr. Grubb 's teaching to learn to be good, 
he had not met him until he was a grown man, 
and then it is very hard to change your heart. 

By this time Mr. Grubb had been in the Chaco 
for seven years, and the work he had done was 
truly wonderful. At the mission station there 
was a settlement where the people lived in per- 
manent houses instead of wandering from place 
to place. Strangers could go about unarmed 
and in safety. The Indians had been taught to 
work, not only at odd moments, but steadily. 
They had been taught to take care of sheep and 
cattle and to raise vegetables. 

They had learned to distrust the witch-doc- 
tors and to take precautions against contagion. 
They had learned to respect the law and to live 
at peace with their neighbors. They had built 
several hundred miles of cart tracks. They had 
axes, knives, hoes, scissors, and many other pos- 
sessions which Mr. Grubb had had shipped from 
England to help them to live more comfortably 
and to earn their living more easily. Some 
could even read and write. 

They had learned still more important les- 



38 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

sons. Mr. Grubb had taught them that it was 
unspeakably wicked to kill the poor little babies 
as they had been doing, and equally wrong to 
bury alive sick people whom they thought would 
soon die. He had taught them also that it was 
wrong to drink liquor because it made them 
frantic and wicked. Though they did not al- 
ways do what was right, hundreds of them knew 
what was right, and had begun to try to be good. 

They knew also — and this was most impor- 
tant of all — about God and Jesus, and, though 
none had openly become Christians, the seed 
of Christianity had been planted in their hearts. 

Now Poit had a special chance to learn what 
was right because he was constantly in the com- 
pany of Mr. Grubb who had brought about this 
wonderful transformation. He was very bright 
and Mr. Grubb depended upon him, and he 
seemed very faithful and Mr. Grubb trusted 
him. He could hunt and set traps, and steal 
quietly up to the ostriches and capture them, 
and find his way through the woods, and make 
bows and arrows, and do other useful things. 

When Mr. Grubb had been in the Chaco for 
seven years he went home to England for a va- 
cation, the first vacation he had had. Other 
young men had come to help him, and the mis- 
sion was so well established that it would not 
surfer in his absence. 



THE STORY OF POIT 39 

Before he went away, tie planned carefully 
for his return. He intended then to visit a dis- 
tant tribe called the Toothli, to which Poit be- 
longed, and he had already built a bullock road 
in that direction. He sent Poit to a distant set- 
tlement with seventeen head of cattle and other 
goods and told him that he was to settle down 
there and make friends with the people. He 
was not to sell the cattle to people who would 
use them for food, but only to those who would 
raise other cattle, because Mr. Grubb was very 
anxious for the natives to learn to care for 
stock. 

Poit was to tell the Toothli that the mission- 
aries would come and live with them if they 
would do certain things. They must give up 
making beer, and they must not hold feasts 
which lasted more than three days. They must 
work when they were called upon for the good 
of the whole settlement, and they must help to 
build the cart track and keep it clear. They 
must live at peace with their neighbors, and 
above all they must cease at once the killing of 
little children. 

Poit had done so well, that this important 
work was entrusted to him and off he went with 
his cattle and his goods. He was very proud 
and at first he obeyed Mr. Grubb 's directions. 
But alas, his pride in Mr. Grubb's confidence 



40 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

and his feeling of responsibility did not con- 
tinue. He forgot what he had learned ; he con- 
vinced himself that Mr. Grubb was gone for 
good; and he took possession of the property 
which Mr. Grubb had given him. He began to 
sell the cattle to people who used them for food, 
and he took the money for himself. 

When Mr. Grubb came back, Poit was terri- 
fied. He had not believed Mr. Grubb 's promise 
nor had he understood in the least how devoted 
Mr. Grubb was to his work. Now the money 
had to be paid over, and he had to give an ac- 
count of the cattle, and he had spent a part of 
the money, and the cattle had been eaten. In 
order to cover his crime, he stole money from 
the missionaries. He was so clever that they 
did not at first suspect that he was the thief. 
But he could not bring the cattle back to life and 
soon he realized that discovery was at hand; 
Mr. Grubb would learn that he had not been 
faithful. 

Mr. Grubb prepared at once to fulfil his 
promise to visit the Toothli people, and so little 
did he suspect Poit of wrong-doing that he made 
him the leader of the six Indians whom he took 
with him. 

It was so hot that the party traveled by night 
to avoid the sun. They had a pretty comfort- 
able track to walk on, but on both sides were 



THE STORY OF POIT 41 

thickets of trees and vines in which the twenty- 
four kinds of frogs croaked in twenty-four dif- 
ferent notes, and everywhere were mosquitoes 
which flew out hungrily when they heard human 
beings approaching. 

Suddenly Mr. Grubb looked round and saw 
that, of all his company, only Poit was in sight. 
He sent him back at once to find out why the 
others lingered. In a little while Poit reap- 
peared and reported that one of the bearers had 
a thorn in his foot, and his companions were 
extracting it. They would all be along, he said, 
in a few minutes. 

But the few minutes passed and the Indians 
did not come. Poit had wickedly told them that 
Mr. Grubb did not need them and that they 
might return toward the mission. He had 
dreamed that when his disobedience was found 
out, Mr. Grubb had killed him, and he had de- 
cided in terror that he must kill Mr. Grubb as 
soon as possible. He meant to go on for a few 
days until they had reached the Toothli country 
and then he would do the deed. He believed 
that the people of his tribe would help him to- 
hide his crime. 

Mr. Grubb noticed that Poit seemed down- 
cast, but he did not dream what he had in his 
heart. The two went on alone, and still the 
other Indians did not overtake them. Poit 



42 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

suggested that perhaps they had gone home be- 
cause they did not approve of the journey. Still 
Mr. Grubb did not suspect his evil intention, 
and they traveled on, arriving presently at the 
village which was Poit's home. 

Here Mr. Grubb inquired about the cattle, but 
everybody was in league with Poit and helped 
him conceal his theft, and still Mr. Grubb was 
deceived. The people said that the cattle had 
merely strayed away, and he gave orders that 
they be collected before his return. 

For two days he and Poit journeyed toward 
the distant settlements, and at last Poit de- 
cided that he could postpone the murder no 
longer. His heart was depressed when he 
woke, because in his sleep he had understood 
more clearly than when he was awake what a 
fearful thing it was to kill a man who had shown 
such love for those who would gladly have been 
his enemies. 

As he moved about, his courage revived; he 
ceased to be downcast and became cheerful. So 
cold-blooded was he that he sat beside Mr. 
Grubb on the ground while he sharpened the 
long iron arrow with which he intended to kill 
him. 

They were now traveling by day, and they set 
out at about half -past six for their last journey 
together. The sun was already high and so hot 



44 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

that it had dried the heavy dew. They had gone 
but a short distance when Mr. Grubb saw that 
he had been led into a thicket. He observed a 
strange look on Poit's face, and did not realize 
that he had canght Poit's eye at the moment 
when he was trying to get into a position from 
which he could shoot him. 

A moment later he bent over, trying to break 
a path through the undergrowth, and in that 
instant Poit lifted his bow and arrow. A sting- 
ing blow under his shoulder blade, and Mr. 
Grubb understood in a flash that this was not 
his friend but his enemy, and that he had been 
shot, perhaps fatally. 

When the deed was done, Poit came to him- 
self. He shouted in dismay and terror, "Ak 
kai! Ak kail" and rushed away. 

He had run only a short distance when he 
sat down to think. He believed that he had either 
killed Mr. Grubb outright or that Mr. Grubb 
would soon die from his wounds or that he 
would be slain by a jaguar whose tracks they 
had crossed. He decided craftily that he would 
set out straightway for the mission and say 
that he had seen a jaguar about to leap, and 
that, shooting at the jaguar, he had killed Mr. 
Grubb. 

He had not gone very far when he met an 
Indian with paint marks on his body, which 



THE STOEY OF POIT 45 

showed that he was in mourning. Poit sup- 
posed this meant that Mr. Grubb was dead — ■ 
someone must have found Mr. Grubb 's body 
before the jaguar devoured it. He ran back 
into the forest. By this time he was out of his 
mind with fear. For hundreds and hundreds of 
years the Indians had killed foreigners without 
thinking anything about it; but now there was 
a change. Here was an Indian mourning for a 
foreigner! Poit was puzzled and frightened. 
He did not yet know that all the Indians were 
crying out for vengeance upon the man who had 
tried to murder their benefactor. 

But what neither Poit nor the mourning In- 
dian knew was that Mr. Grubb was still alive. 
How he reached the mission was a miracle. He 
was more dead than alive from the wound which 
pierced his lung, and from exhaustion. Some- 
times he staggered along leaning on two In- 
dians ; sometimes he rode a horse on whose back 
he had to be supported. Often his companions 
had to lay him down on the ground lest he 
should die. He suffered from the heat by day 
and was tortured by the mosquitoes by night. 
As though this were not enough, one night a 
goat belonging to an Indian jumped on him by 
accident ! 

But at last he reached the mission and had 
proper medical attention, and all along the 



46 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

weary way the Indians saw his agony and un- 
derstood that he was suffering because he had 
come to help them. They thought not only of 
him, but of the Master about whom he had told 
them, and they believed that he had been saved 
by a miracle. 

Though Mr. Grubb still lived, the Indians de- 
cided that Poit must die, and they searched for 
him until they captured him. He pleaded with 
them desperately, reminding them that he was 
their relative whom they had known all their 
lives and that Mr. Grubb was only a stranger; 
but they would not listen. 

When he heard that Poit was to die, Mr. 
Grubb tried to save him, but in vain. He did, 
however, succeed in saving Poit's family whom 
the Indians would have killed also. This for- 
giving spirit amazed and touched them still 
more. 

Now this story is sad and dreadful and there 
would not be any reason for telling it if Poit's 
death were the end. But in a way, it was only 
a beginning. 

Mr. Grubb had to make two journeys for fur- 
ther medical attention, one to Ascuncion, nearly 
four hundred miles away, and one to Buenos 
Ayres, nine hundred miles away. It was De- 
cember when Poit attacked him ; it was June be- 
fore he was able to take up his work. When he 



THE STORY OF POIT 47 

did so, the seed so strangely sown by poor Poit 
had ripened. Two Indians who had been im- 
pressed by Mr. Grubb's devotion and by his al- 
most miraculous recovery asked to be baptized. 
Thus the founation of the Church in the Chaco 
was laid. 

Mr. Grubb is still working, and the extent of 
his influence has greatly increased. The In- 
dians in the distant settlements no longer wait 
for him to seek them out ; they come to see for 
themselves what he has done and to hear the 
story he has to tell. The government has named 
him the "pacificator of the Indians.' ' 

Do you not suppose that sometimes as he 
thinks of his years in the Chaco, he thinks with 
pity of poor Poit and hopes that his cry "Ak 
kai! Ak kail" showed repentance as well as 
fear of punishment ? 



IV 
TEEE-NOT-SHAKEN-BY-THE-WIND 

Ten-yeak-old Fred Hope looked tip at the 
men who looked down at him. He was very 
happy because he had just taken the pencil and 
paper which one of the men handed him, and 
written 

Fred Hope $1.00 

He lived on a farm near Flat Bock, Illinois, 
and many times he had seen his father sign his 
name to a subscription paper when the deacons 
had been collecting money for the church and 
had made up his mind that some day he would 
sign his own name. At last he had done so, and 
his eyes were shining. 

"Now," said he, "I've got to find a way to 
make that dollar." 

He took a hoe and some beans and went into 
the garden to begin to earn his dollar. He 
planted the beans and watched eagerly to see 
them grow. It was a bad year for beans in Illi- 
nois and there was no crop. But he did not give 
up. From beans he turned to rats. The rats 
had been eating his father's grain and Fred 
made a contract to rid the place of rats at five 
cents apiece. It happened there were more rats 

48 



TREE-NOT-SHAKEN-BY-THE-WIND 49 

than beans in Flat Rock that year and no In- 
dian chief ever counted with more pride his 
scalps of white men than Fred the notches which 
numbered the rats he had slain. Soon the dollar 
was paid, and his father's grain was safe. 

The next money Fred made was to pay his 
way to college. When he had almost enough 
saved, his mother said : 

''Father does not see how he can get along 
without you on the farm. He has had a great 
deal of trouble and lost a lot of money." 

"Of course I'll stay, and I'll find a way to go 
to college later on," answered Fred. 

When he was twenty-four years old he went 
to Maryville College in Tennessee. There he 
had to begin with the small boys in the prepara- 
tory department. 

"You might just as well give up," said some 
of his friends. "You are so far behind you can 
never catch up." 

But Fred only laughed. "I'll find a way. 
When I can't raise beans I always catch rats." 

He worked as hard at his lessons as he had on 
the farm, and played as well as he worked. He 
was the best man on his football team, and when 
he graduated he was president of his class. 

While he was at school he thought he would 
like to be a missionary, but he did not wish to 
be a preacher and he had never heard of a mis- 



50 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

sionary who was not a preacher. At last he set- 
tled it this way : 

"If God wants me to be a missionary and 
there is any way I can be a missionary without 
being a preacher then 111 be one." 

A few years later as a steamer neared the 
west coast of Africa, Fred Hope jumped from 
one of the berths. He called to his wife to dress 
as fast as she could so they should not miss the 
first glimpse of the shore. 

He had found a way; he was going to Elat on 
the west coast of Africa to take charge of the 
Frank James Industrial School. As he stood 
on the deck in the gray light of the early morn- 
ing, he seemed to see John Ludwig Krapf and 
Eobert Moffat and David Livingstone and all 
the men and women who had found a way to 
give their lives to Africa, and his heart was 
glad. 

He could see two white dwelling houses sur- 
rounded by tall coconut-palms and other trop- 
ical plants, beyond the dashing surf at the Ba- 
tanga landing. How anxious he was to reach 
them ! The travelers were lowered to the small 
boat in a "Mammy chair,' ' a seat swung by 
ropes from the deck of the steamer. Then the 
sturdy black men pulled for the shore, their 
wet backs gleaming in the sunlight. 

A boy who had come from Elat to meet them 



TREE-NOT-SHAKEN-BY-THE-WIND 51 

was waiting with two bicycles. Mr. Hope had 
never been on a bicycle, so he practised riding 
round and round, to the amusement of all the 
crowd. Then he and Mrs. Hope started on their 
long journey of one hundred and ten miles in 
the narrow path through the African jungle. 

On either side of them giant trees reached up- 
ward for many, many feet before spreading out 
branches to the sunlight above. Underneath the 
trees there was no sunshine, only the gloom of 
dense foliage. It made them feel as though they 
were in a great cathedral, — the quiet, the great 
pillars of the trees, and the dim light. 

As they rode on through the villages and the 
bush, people crowded round them curiously. 
The black men could not speak the white man's 
words or make the white man understand their 
words. They pointed to Mr. Hope's head. 

1 ' They want you to take off your hat so they 
can see your straight hair, ' ' said the boy. 

Mr. Hope took off his hat. They looked at 
his straight hair very solemnly. Then they 
pointed to Mrs. Hope's head. 

"They want to see the hair that is like long 
ropes," said the boy. Mrs. Hope took off her 
hat. 

They moved their hands to their heads and 
then far out until she understood that they 
wanted her to take out the hairpins and stretch 



52 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

her hair as far as it would reach "like long 
ropes.' ' 

They gazed with wonder at its length and 
softness. Then one of them opened his mouth 
and pointed first to his teeth and then to Mr. 
Hope's mouth. Soon every black man was do- 
ing the same thing. 

"They want to see your brass teeth,' ' the boy 
explained. Mr. Hope opened his mouth, while 
the people who had never heard of a dentist 
gazed with much respect at the gold fillings. 

"How do the people all along the way know 
we are coming ?" asked Mr. Hope. "There are 
no telegraph wires or telephones." 

' ' By the drums, ' ' answered the boy. ' ' Every 
village has its drums. They are hollowed out 
of logs so the ends make curious sounds that 
speak to those who listen. When you pass 
through a village the men who beat the drums 
call to the next village, 'Strange white man is 
here.' All important men have drum names. 
Perhaps you will do something so brave they 
will give you a drum name some day." 

When they reached Elat, Mr. Hope began to 
find the work God had provided for a man who 
was not a preacher. The missionaries who had 
been in Africa said that the boys and men who 
went home after being in the mission schools 
had nothing to do. There were no stores for 




© Underwood and Underwood 

Native African "Wireless Station" 

Every village on the West Coast has its drum by which 
messages are sent from village to village, 



54 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

them to run, no factories or shops in which they 
could work, and no one had ever taught them 
how to farm. 

There were not even any decent houses. They 
had to live in little huts made out of the bark 
of trees, with a dirt floor, no windows, and only 
one little door, so low that they had almost to 
crawl in. Their houses had only one room, and 
in that room all the family cooked and ate and 
slept. The chickens stayed in a little room built 
at the side of the house. There was no way for 
them to get in except through the same door 
that led through the house. Often they stopped 
to take a peck at the food the women were grind- 
ing between heavy flat stones. 

The houses were very dirty. The women had 
no time to keep their houses clean ; they had to 
dig and hoe the ground and harvest the crops 
and look after their children and cook the meals. 

Meanwhile the men sat round the huts and 
smoked and drank and palavered. To ' 'pal- 
aver' ' means to talk and talk and then talk some 
more. Sometimes they went hunting and some- 
times they fought men of other tribes. If they 
had known how to work or if it had been the 
custom for them to work, they would not have 
been so good-for-nothing. 

Mr. Hope decided that one of the best deeds 
one could do for Africa would be to teach the 



TKEE-NOT-SHAKEN-BY-THE-WIND 55 

men and boys how to work, to build decent 
houses and churches and towns, to make furni- 
ture and clothes, and to use the wonderful nat- 
ural gifts God has given to Africa. 

The Frank James Industrial School had been 
started to do all of these things and half a dozen 
boys were there to welcome the new superin- 
tendent. The school building was a little bark 
shack much like a native hut. From an indus- 
trial school at Old Calabar Mr. Hope secured a 
tailor and a carpenter. He found an old hand 
sewing machine which someone had almost 
worn out in America and then put into a mis- 
sionary box for Africa. Then the boys were 
ready to sew. 

The first order they took was for clothes for 
a party of men who came many miles carrying 
burdens. In the interior of Africa there are 
no freight or express lines and everything is 
carried on the heads or backs of men. These 
bearers had come one hundred and twenty-five 
miles carrying sixty-five pounds each. They re- 
ceived one cent a mile for their loads. When 
they got their money, Mr. Hope said, "it burned 
their pockets, or would have burned them if they 
had had any pockets." That was just what they 
wanted — some pockets like the white men. They 
wore only pieces of bark cloth tied around their 
waists. 



56 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

They wanted to spend their money at once 
and asked how much they could buy for $1.25. 
Mr. Hope told them that would not buy a whole 
suit of clothes, so they decided that each of them 
would get a coat, since a coat had more pockets 
than trousers. The boys in the tailoring school 
took their measure for their first order for 
" clothes made while you wait." 

They waited for a whole week and then went 
home each wearing a khaki coat and as happy as 
if he had a full outfit. Since that day the tailor- 
ing class has never caught up with its orders. 
The men and boys have made clothes for them- 
selves, for the missionaries and their wives and 
children, and for people in the country round 
about. They have even made uniforms for army 
officials. They can do all this work because now 
they have large, plank buildings and machinery 
which includes fifteen sewing machines. 

But tailoring would not keep everyone busy, 
and other things besides clothes were needful, 
so Mr. Hope put some of the boys to work in a 
carpentry class. Logs of beautiful wood were 
brought from the wonderful forests. There 
were no great trucks in Elat, so a team of fifteen 
or twenty men was made up to haul the logs 
to the saw mill and from there they were taken 
to the carpenter shop. 

At first all the lumber was sawed by hand, and 



TREE-NOT-SHAKEN-BY-THE-WIND 57 

it took two men all day to saw out half a dozen 
planks. Then Mr. Hope wrote to America for 
an engine. When the big engine landed at 
Batanga the people were very much excited. 

' ' Let us go with you to bring it to Elat, ' ' said 
several of the men. 

' 'How will we be able to pull such a big en- 
gine that weighs so much!" asked one. 

"You are an ignorant man," answered an- 
other. "Do you not know the strange thing that 
white men say of this engine?" 

"What is it that they say?" 

' ' They say that men need not pull this engine 
along the road, but that if men will make fire 
in it and put water over the fire the engine will 
walk by itself along the road." 

When they reached Batanga they helped to 
put the water in the boiler and make the fire and 
then they saw the engine "walk by itself." 

They had traveled about thirty-five miles 
along the wide, new road, and Mr. Hope was 
thinking how wonderful it would be to have the 
big engine at the saw mill, when there was a 
crash, and the bridge over the muddy stream 
they were crossing went down. The engine 
turned over and dropped twenty feet into the 
creek below. 

Mr. Hope and his friend, who were riding 
on the engine, went down with it and were 



58 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

thrown to one side. The black men thought 
they were killed, for heavy timbers had fallen 
all around them, but they soon crawled out alive 
and stood looking at their engine lying upside 
down in the mud of the little creek. 

The black men said the engine could never be 
raised from the creek. Mr. Hope only smiled, 
and went to work. In a week the engine was 
standing on the road ready to walk by itself 
again. 

Then a message came from the governor say- 
ing the engine would not be allowed to walk 
through his country. But even this did not dis- 
courage Mr. Hope. He sent back to Elat for 
one hundred men. They came and hitched them- 
selves to the engine like horses and pulled it all 
the long way to Elat, where from that time it 
sawed the wood as fast as it was needed. It 
was a year from the time they started until they 
pulled the engine into Elat. 

At first the boys made very simple furniture, 
but soon they advanced to dining-room exten- 
sion tables, couches, davenports, and bookcases. 
Morris chairs were their especial delight, and 
they have invented ingenious folding-chairs. 

Mr. Hope looked at some American wicker 
and willow furniture and said, "We ought to 
beat that in Africa, because we have such won- 
derful bush-rope in the jungles." 




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60 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

So the boys began to gather rattan vines of 
different sizes and make it into bush-rope fur- 
niture which was so beautiful that when foreign 
officers visited Africa and saw it, they insisted 
on taking samples home with them. 

Next the boys turned their attention to build- 
ing houses. They practised on houses for them- 
selves; then they built houses for the mission- 
aries. They decorated Mr. Hope's house with 
beautiful mahogany panels made from the trees 
that grew right at their door. 

When, after a while, the government needed 
large warehouses the boys from Elat were able 
to build them. 

Their greatest triumph was the Elat church. 
This is not a little chapel as one might expect 
in a mission ; it is a church that seats four thou- 
sand people. Not only did they build the church, 
but they made all the furniture for it, and the 
many thousands of mats of dried grass with 
which the roof was covered. Next they went 
around the country building other Christian 
churches as they were needed. 

They learned to make small articles as well 
as large. From the tusks of the elephants, which 
were not in cages at the Zoo, but at home in the 
forests all about, they made ivory chessmen. 

Of course, Mr. Hope cannot keep forever the 
many boys and men who come to the school. 



TREE-NOT-SHAKE^-BY-THE-WIND 61 

Most of them must go back to their own homes. 
He wanted them to know how to farm when they 
went back, so he laid out a little farm for them 
to practise on at the schools, and here they 
learn the best methods of planting and cultivat- 
ing. They have tried to find new plants which 
might grow in Africa. Our own American Agri- 
cultural Bureau became interested in exchang- 
ing plants and seeds, and before long we will 
see African vegetables in America and Amer- 
ican vegetables in Africa. 

Some boys are taught to become blacksmiths 
and in their shop they do everything from put- 
ting a new blade into a pocket-knife to rebuild- 
ing an automobile. 

"An automobile ! ' ' you say. "Where did 
they find it?" It happened in a curious fash- 
ion. Elat was in German territory and when 
the Great War began and the Germans were 
driven away, they did not wish to leave behind 
anything that would be of help to the French 
army, so they piled up all their bicycles, motor 
cycles, automobiles, and trucks and wrecked 
them with sledges and blew them up with dyna- 
mite. To be sure that nothing was left they set 
fire to the wreck. The French officers came 
along and looked at the pile of scrap iron and 
said, "Junk! Nothing worth taking with us," 
and gave it to the mission. When Fred Hope 



62 UNDEK MANY FLAGS 

saw it, his eyes shone just as if they had taken 
him into a big supply store and said, "Help 
yourself." Some people might have shrugged 
their shoulders in despair, but Mr. Hope and his 
assistant, Mr. Cozzens, set the boys at the school 
to work on the junk heap, and out of it they 
made an automobile. This model is not to be 
bought in the American market, but it has a 
number of good points all its own. Then they 
made an auto-truck. What was left was made 
into a steam engine which runs the shaft that 
in turn runs a planer, a boring machine, a shin- 
gle mill, a grinder, and a large lathe. 

During the war there was no oil to be had for 
the machinery, but Mr. Hope did not stop all the 
wheels and cable to America that he would have 
to close the school. 

"See all these beans growing around us," he 
said to his boys. "They are almost like the 
castor beans we have in America, and Ameri- 
cans make oil out of the castor bean. Bring me 
a jack from the carpenter shop." The boys ran 
to get the jack. "Now, turn it upside down and 
make a press out of it." 

They mashed the beans until a thick oil ran 
out. Then Mr. Hope bought peanuts, not ten 
cents worth in a paper sack from the corner 
store, but tons from the farms where they grew. 
The boys mashed them until barrelfuls of oil 



TKEE-NOT-SHAKEN-BY-THE-WIND 63 

were stored away. It was a better grade and 
much cheaper than the oil they bought from 
Europe. Today two hydraulic presses make the 
manufacture of oil easy. 

"What shall we do now?" asked a boy one 
day. "There are no more of the American 
brooms. " 

"Why not make brooms here in our own 
school !" said Mr. Hope. 

They planted broom-corn seed and it grew so 
well that now broom-making is one of the trades 
taught at Elat. 

During the war there was no soap to be had. 
Some people said, "How dreadful !" but Mr. 
Hope said, "What good luck! We shall have to 
find a way to make our own soap. ' ' 

He sent to America for lye, and the school 
has added soap-making to its other work. 

One day the boys asked what they should do 
with the shavings in the carpenter shop. 

"Burn them," said Mr. Hope. "Burn all of 
them. ' ' 

The foolish boys set fire to them on the dirt 
floor of the shop. They were piled up so high 
that the roof mats caught fire and in a few 
moments there was nothing left of the car- 
pentry shop but a pile of ashes and a few black- 
ened tools. 

But almost before the ashes were cold, Mr. 



64 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

Hope started the remorseful boys to building 
another shop, and in less than a week they were 
back at work. 

Many of the young men who came to the 
school were married, and Mr. Hope decided that 
he would build a town where each man who at- 
tended school could live in his own home. His 
town now has houses on each side of the street 
and more than one hundred families live there. 
In the afternoons, Mrs. Hope has classes for the 
girls and women. She teaches them to cook and 
to sew, to read and to write, and to take care of 
their children. 

After the boys and men and their wives have 
finished their training in the schools, they go 
back to their own villages. Often they build 
themselves a home. The chief is sure to be in- 
terested in a man who has a house better than 
his own, so the mission boys become men of 
importance. 

Hundreds of boys have been turned away 
from the school because they could not be ac- 
commodated. Only the strongest Christian 
boys are chosen. These boys come from all 
parts of the mission and are recommended for 
admission by the missionaries who know them. 

Frequently the boys themselves become mis- 
sionaries. They build churches and tell the peo- 
ple the wonderful story of the " Tribe of God" 




Fred Hope 



His steadfastness and perseverance won for him from 
the Africans the name, " Tree-Not-Shaken-by-the- Wind.' 



66 UNDEK MANY FLAGS 

to which they belong. Many of them start 
schools. None of them sit around their huts all 
day and smoke and drink and beat their wives 
and quarrel, as their fathers and grandfathers 
used to do. While they learn their trades, they 
become better Christians, not only because they 
listen to the preaching on Sunday, but because 
they watch Mr. and Mrs. Hope and the other 
missionaries and see how they live. 

Fred Hope said he would be a missionary if 
he could be one without being a preacher, yet 
he preaches every day. Sometimes he ventures 
to stand up in church or among the people who 
crowd the doors of the mission, and tell them 
the story of the Son of God who gave Himself 
for them, but most of his preaching is his every- 
day living. 

He has won his "drum name." He began to 
win it when he paid his pledge for $1.00 by 
catching rats when his bean crop failed, and 
always since then he has found some way to do 
the things that he undertakes no matter how 
hard they are or how many difficulties he meets. 

If you were in an African village which Mr. 
Hope was about to visit, you would not be 
handed a telegram stating "Fred Hope has ar- 
rived, ' ' but instead, you would hear the drums 
beat the call, " 'Tree-not-Shaken-by-the-Wind' 
is here." 



WHEN MARY WAS AFEAID 

The night was gloomy and rain threatened, 
yet there were many boys and girls on Queen 
Street in Dundee. They were doing nothing in 
particular; they did not seem to be on their 
way anywhere; they were simply hanging 
about. 

Opening into Queen Street were courts called 
"pends" or "closes." These were not streets, 
for they were very narrow, or thoroughfares, 
because they led nowhere; they were merely 
vestibules to tall buildings where human beings 
lived huddled together like animals. They 
were paved with rough stones, and in order to 
reach the spiral staircase on the outside of the 
old tenements one had to step through masses 
of filth. 

Even so, these boys and girls found the pend 
and the gateway into the street and the street 
itself a pleasant change from the crowded rooms 
in which they lived. All day they worked in 
factories, and in the evening they naturally 
tried to find entertainment. 

This evening they were in a good humor, and 
it was very plain that they were awaiting some 

67 



68 TTlffDETt MANY FLAGS 

interesting event. They looked down the street 
eagerly as one might look for the approach of 
the band at the head of a circus parade. Pres- 
ently they drew near together before the door 
of a little room on the ground floor of Queen 
Street. The window-shades were lifted and 
within were to be seen rows of benches and a 
little table. They looked in and laughed. 

"We'll get her!" said a rough voice. "Just 
wait till she comes to her prayer-meeting!" 

So it was not for a circus parade they were 
watching ! 

' ' She wants to go out to Africa to teach black 
people !" said another, and there were shrieks 
of laughter as though this were the strangest 
desire ever heard of. 

"Black people !" repeated the largest boy of 
all. "I'll black her eye." As he spoke he swung 
a heavy object at the end of a string. It looked 
like a piece of lead and was a dangerous 
weapon. 

At this moment a figure appeared at the cor- 
ner and advanced toward the group. 

"She's coming!" shouted a girl. "She's 
coming ! ' ' 

There was delighted laughter and a sudden 
stooping to the earth. There were loose stones 
on Queen Street and there was also mud, both 
soft, sticky mud and hard, dried mud. 



WHEN MARY WAS AFRAID 69' 

"We'll do for her!" cried another girl. 

"We'll make her let us alone." 

"I'm a good shot." 

A foe worthy of these many fierce opponents 
should have been tall and strong and well- 
armed, but the approaching figure was that of 
a girl. Her name was Mary Slessor; she was 
fourteen years old and short for her age. She 
had not had a chance to grow to her full height 
because she got up at ^.ve o'clock in the morn- 
ing, helped her mother until she went to the 
factory at six, worked until six in the evening, 
and then helped her mother until a late bedtime. 
When she had a spare moment she read, even 
propping her book up on her loom as the great 
missionary Livingstone had done when he was 
a factory boy. 

The shouts of the boys and girls grew louder. 

"Hi, Mary Slessor!" 

"Hither!" 

' ' You let us alone, or we '11 do for you ! ' ' 

The little figure came straight on. 

"We're not going to come to your meetings !" 
shouted a loud voice. 

"We don't care for your meetings!" yelled 
another. 

"You clear right out of here!" howled a 
third. 

Still the little figure advanced. 



70 UNDEE MANY FLAGS 

"I won't give up," she shouted back, white- 
faced and stubborn. "You can do what you 
like; I won't give up!" 

In answer to this defiance there was a mo- 
ment's silence. Then the largest boy stepped 
out with his weight tied to a cord in his hand. 

"All right," he said. "Then look out for 
your head!" 

His companions moved back out of danger, 
and he began to swing the lead round and round. 

"You can't frighten me," said Mary. "I'm 
going to go to the meetings and I'm going to 
invite you to the meetings. You can 't stop me. ' ' 

She stood perfectly still. The tall boy moved 
nearer. He lifted his arm and began to swing 
the piece of lead round and round in the air. 
It passed within six inches of Mary's face; an- 
other swing, and it was within four inches. Now 
it touched a flying tendril of her hair. Another 
swing and it might kill her. 

But the boy dropped his arm and let the cruel 
weapon fall. For the first time in his unruly 
life he had been beaten — not by force, but by 
love. 

"Let her alone," he said gruffly. "She's 
game." 

A little color came into Mary's pale cheeks. 
Most persons would have been satisfied with 
this victory, but Mary was not. She boldly re- 



WHEN" MAEY WAS AFEAID 71 

peated the crime for which she had been so 
nearly punished. 

"Will you come to my meeting ?" she asked. 

The leader put both hands into his pockets. 

"Well, this beats me!" he said. His com- 
panions expected that now Mary Slessor's hour 
had come. Instead, he turned on them furi- 
ously. 

"Go on in!" he commanded, and into the 
meeting filed the whole party. 

It was not this time that Mary was afraid. 

In far-off Calabar in Africa in the deep woods 
there was a stir. Dawn was not yet complete, 
though there was a grayish light over every- 
thing and a pink glow in the eastern sky. The 
trees were tall, the foliage dark, and here and 
there were gorgeous flowers. Now and then a 
parrot or a monkey chattered high up on the 
branches. Near by flowed a beautiful stream, 
overshadowed by thick foliage and edged by 
blooming water-lilies. 

So far everything was beautiful. But in the 
deep thickets there were sounds which were not 
beautiful, the angry shouts of harsh, human 
voices. Advancing through the bushes were 
many black men, wearing almost no clothing, 
but armed to the teeth. They carried knives in 
their belts and spears and guns in their hands. 



72 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

Their black eyes glittered, their teeth gleamed, 
they panted for breath. They were on the war- 
path, and they looked as terrible as charging 
beasts of prey. They were a tribe of the Oko- 
yong country, going to meet in battle another 
tribe, a member of which had injured their 
chief. Nothing one would have said could stay 
them. 

Suddenly they heard a sound of advancing 
footsteps and a shrill call. They tightened their 
grasp on their weapons. Was the enemy at 
hand? Then up and at him! 

But it was not an enemy; the voice was not 
that of a warrior; it was that of a woman. It 
was not even that of a woman of Okoyong; it 
was that of a white woman. ' ' Stop ! " it called, 
in the language of the Okoyong. ' ' Stop ! Lis- 
ten tome!" 

There came into view a little woman who 
looked, in spite of the passing of many years, 
like the girl who had defied the boys in Queen 
Street. She was not much taller and certainly 
no stouter. Her hair was bobbed like a boy's, 
and this made her look much as she had long 
ago. It was undoubtedly Mary Slessor. 

She advanced rapidly, running over the 
ground in bare feet. One could not keep one's 
shoes dry in the damp grass, and it was better 
to go unshod. 




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74 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

"Stop!" she called again. "Listen to me!" 

"Ma is coming!" said a dozen angry voices. 

"She needn't think she can stop us with any 
of her peace talk ! ' ' 

"Disgrace has been put upon us," said an- 
other. "We must have vengeance." 

The warriors shook their heads impatiently. 
They would listen, but they would not obey. 
The little figure came nearer and nearer and 
stood at last regarding them. 

Calabar was not only one of the most beau- 
tiful places in the world, it was one of the most 
terrible. Just as into the pends and closes of 
Dundee had crowded all the poor and wretched 
beings who could not afford to live elsewhere, 
so into Calabar had drifted the most ignorant, 
the most degraded, the most persecuted of the 
black men on the West Coast. On one side the 
water prevented them from going farther; not 
far away from the other side was the desert. 
From the sea came a terrible enemy, the slave- 
trader, who seized thousands of victims and car- 
ried them away to die in misery in his ships or 
to serve hard masters in distant lands. The 
country was under the control of England, but 
no white men penetrated it to face death from 
starvation, fever, or the bullet or poisoned ar- 
row or spear-tip of a warrior. 

Missionaries try to speak as kindly as pos- 



WHEN MAKY WAS AFEAID 75 

sible about the people among whom they work, 
but for these poor Africans they had only 
dreadful words, "bloody," "savage," "cruel," 
"crafty," "devilish," "cannibals," "murder- 
ers." They did their best for them along the 
coast, but their efforts to penetrate inland were 
in vain. It was no wonder they were ' l bloody, ' ' 
"savage," and "cruel," since the white man 
whom the Africans knew was a demon who 
stole men, who taught them new ways of mur- 
dering one another, and who brought them rum 
which made beasts of them. 

Most fierce and terrible of all the tribes and 
most dangerous to the white man were the 
Okoyong whose watchword seemed to be 
"war." They fought among themselves in 
their own villages and in various tribes; but 
most of all they fought the surrounding nations. 
The life of a warrior from Calabar was not 
worth an instant's purchase if he appeared on 
their borders. 

But into this country Mary Slessor had gone, 
and here she was at dawn, alone, facing a tribe 
of angry men — not only facing them, but giving 
them orders. 

She had left Scotland and had lived for a 
while in the mission school at Duke Town near 
the coast where all was orderly, and there had 
learned the language. Now she lived in a mud 



76 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

hut and ate the food of the natives, partly so 
that she might have a large share of her salary 
to send home to her mother, and partly because 
she wanted to learn the hearts of the native men 
and women and the secret of their dreadful cus- 
toms. If she knew why they believed it neces- 
sary to kill the wives of a chief when he died 
and put their bodies with his into the grave, if 
she knew why they threw poor little twin babies 
into the bushes to die, if she knew why they 
offered human sacrifices, — then she might be 
able to persuade them to understand their own 
wickedness. 

She asked at last to be sent to Okoyong, and 
here she was alone, so far as white companion- 
ship was concerned, but with many black com- 
panions. She had even adopted a family, all 
of them black. One was a little girl, brought to 
her by a white trader. 

"I found this tiny baby thing in the bush," 
he said. "It is a twin, and the other is dead." 

Mary called the baby Janie for her sister in 
Scotland. Finally she had seven, who would 
otherwise have died and whom she nursed and 
taught and trained. 

The Okoyong, who would not have endured 
the presence of a man, tolerated her. She lived 
at first in the king's hut, where they were able 
to watch her day and night. They believed that 



WHEN MAKY WAS AFRAID 77 

she could do them no harm, and they were will- 
ing to let her prescribe for their illnesses and 
try to heal their poor bodies. They called her 
' 'Ma," and when she did not oppose their cus- 
toms, they obeyed her. 

But Mary Slessor was not one to countenance 
evil, or to step aside from a path which she had 
set for herself. When she saw prisoners about 
to be tortured, not as punishment, but merely 
as a test of their innocence, she protested and 
argued and scolded until the chief reconsidered. 
When human sacrifices were tc be offered after 
the death of a young chief, she grew frantic; 
she mocked and commanded and even slept be- 
side the prisoners so that they should not be 
murdered, and she helped them escape. She 
arbitrated quarrels, she proved the witch-doc- 
tors to be impostors. Day in and day out she 
preached of a Kingdom of Love until the na- 
tives began to understand what it would be 
to live at peace with their fellows, to be free 
from fear and superstition, and to have hope in 
God. 

The government sent no consul into the dis- 
trict but appointed Mary Slessor to be consul, 
and she sat in distant villages and heard dis- 
putes and debated with great chiefs about 
proper punishment for criminals, about trade, 
and about matters in dispute between the na- 



78 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

tives and the government. She was called ' ' The 
White Queen of Okoyong." 

Now she was growing old ; her little body was 
racked by ague; she was often so tired that she 
did not see how she could live, but she saw her 
work prospering. It was necessary for her to 
have a rest, and she was about to leave. She 
was packing her few belongings and the river 
steamer was almost at hand. 

But at the last minute there came to her a 
message. It was a secret ; she did not know who 
brought it. A chief had been injured by a man 
from another tribe, and his own tribesmen were 
on their way to avenge him. 

She did not hesitate for an instant, unless it 
was to look at a picture which hung on the wall 
of her little hut. It was the likeness of a young 
man, the boy who had once defied her in Queen 
Street in Dundee and had flung his leaden 
weight round her head. From the moment when 
he had entered her meeting he had led a better 
life, and he had sent her his picture and that of 
his wife and children to show her how prosper- 
ous they were. With the recollection of that 
courageous stand in her mind, she set out on her 
journey. She might miss the boat and not get 
home, but that made no difference. How could 
she rest if she knew that behind her all her work 
was being undone? 



WHEN MARY WAS AFRAID 79 

The chief men of the village opposed her 
going. 

"They will kill yon." 

"They are mad, they will shoot wildly. If 
yon are not assassinated, yon will be shot by 
accident." 

"They will insnlt yon in their drunken rage." 

But Mary shook her head and started, a man 
going before her beating a drum to show that 
a free protected person was coming. She 
marched straight to the village and there 
the warriors deceived her. They were going to 
start out in the morning, but they said they 
would call her and she might go with them. In 
the morning they called her as they had prom- 
ised, but not until they were ready to start. 
By the time she had quickly sprung up from 
the earth where she was sleeping, the warriors 
were off. 

They showed great stupidity, however, when 
they believed that they could get rid of Mary 
Slessor in this fashion. A hundred yards away 
she caught up to them and now she stood calling 
to them like the sign-post which warns of the 
danger of the rushing train, ' l Stop ! Listen ! ' ' 
This danger was worse than that threatened by 
any rushing train. They began to howl and yell. 

Mary looked at them scornfully. She knew 
how to talk to them. 



80 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

" Don't carry on like small boys!" she said. 
"Be quiet." 

To their amazement, she walked straight 
through their ranks and on to the village where 
the enemy was drawn up in battle array. 

' ' I salute you, ' ' she said. 

The enemy were too much astonished and 
enraged to answer. 

' 'Where are your manners?" she said chid- 
ingly. She began to smile and joke. 

At once an old man stepped out and knelt 
down at her feet. Here was one person at least 
with manners. 

4 'Once when I was sick you came to see me 
and healed me. This is a foolish quarrel. We 
beg you to make peace for us." If Mary had 
been presented with a million dollars, she 
wouldn't have been so happy. 

"You bring three men," she commanded, 
"and three men will come from the other side, 
and we will have a palaver." 

For hours she listened to their story; she 
coaxed them and commanded them and pleaded 
with them and laughed at them. In the end 
she conquered, and they made peace. Then she 
said a few simple words about her Saviour and 
went back over the dark, lonely forest path. 
The boat had gone, but messengers were wait- 
ing to take her down the river in a canoe. 



WHEN MARY WAS AFRAID 81 

It was not this time that Mary Slessor was 
afraid, but the time was coming nearer. 

The afternoon was pleasant and at Duke 
Town, along the coast of Calabar, there was a 
stir which betokened some unusual event. The 
chief missionary, Mr. MacGregor, was moving 
about busily, now in the missionary buildings, 
now in his own house. The Governor General 
and the Commissioner sat on their porches look- 
ing out as though they were watching for some- 
thing or somebody, or waiting for something to 
begin. When Europeans met, they stopped and 
said a joking word to one another. 

It was more than thirty years since Mary 
Slessor had landed in Duke Town, and there 
were many changes. The government buildings 
were larger and finer, the mission buildings had 
increased in number and size, and there were 
many other improvements. England had begun 
to busy herself with the affairs of her colony, 
and the Church at home was listening to the des- 
perate call from Calabar. 

Presently a long line of boys appeared from 
the Boys' School and filed into the hall of the 
mission buildings. Then there came an equally 
long file from the Girls' School. At once the 
chief missionary and the other missionaries and 
the Governor General and the Commissioner 



82 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

went thither also, followed by the Europeans 
and the natives. 

They took their assigned places on the plat- 
form and the benches and sat waiting. They 
watched the door even as the naughty boys and 
girls had looked up the street in Dundee, and 
as the Okoyong chiefs had looked out from be- 
tween the branches. 

' ' She 's coming ! ' ' said a whisper. The whis- 
per passed all along the benches. "She's com- 
ing! She's coming!" 

A little figure advanced to the platform, hes- 
itated, and moved on, assisted by firm and 
tender hands, and urged by laughing voices. 

"Now, come along, Ma! Are you afraid, 
Ma?" 

It must be confessed that now afc last Mary 
Slessor was afraid; afraid of all these eyes, 
though she was accustomed to facing thousands 
of eyes set in black faces; afraid of all these 
smiles, though she was accustomed to friendli- 
ness. Most of all, she was afraid of what was 
being said. Almost before she was seated, the 
Commissioner began to speak. 

"Miss Slessor, I have in my hand a box which 
contains a silver badge of the Order of the Hos- 
pital of St. John of Jerusalem in England, of 
which the King is the sovereign head. This 
badge is conferred only on persons professing 



WHEN MAEY WAS AFEAID 83 

the Christian faith, who are eminently distin- 
guished for philanthropy. It is a Maltese cross, 
embellished in the angles by lions and unicorns. 
I have been directed by the King to bestow this 
badge upon you in recognition of your service 
to the government. You have opened the coun- 
try of Okoyong ; you, above all others, have been 
instrumental in preserving peace ; you have let 
in a great light where there was darkness ; and 
England thanks you, her only woman consul." 

Mary not only was afraid, but she looked 
afraid. Her head bent lower and lower, her 
hands were lifted to hide her face. But at last 
she had to rise and have the medal pinned on 
her shoulder. She stood for a moment, trem- 
bling; then she looked down at the pleased, at- 
tentive faces. She saw herself a little girl in 
Scotland and then a woman in Africa, and once 
again she grew calm and brave and even a little 
ashamed of her embarrassment. The credit for 
what she had done was not hers, she would tell 
where it belonged; then she would feel com- 
fortable. 

"If I have done anything in my life, ' ' she 
said, "it has been easy, because the Master has 
gone before. ,, 

Then she sat down neither proud nor afraid, 
but content. 



VI 

THE BOY FOR WHOM NO ONE CARED 

Within the livery stable in Harrisburg there 
was the sound of rough voices and the tramp 
of horses' feet. Outside the rain fell steadily. 
It was six o'clock on a December morning, and 
the sky was still black. 

Christmas was only a few days off. David 
Day, who worked in the stable, anticipated 
neither a holiday nor a Christmas dinner. It 
was during the Civil War, and hither were 
brought the faithful, worn cavalry and artillery 
horses which were then taken into neighboring 
counties and exchanged for fresh farm horses. 

A large consignment had come in the evening 
before, and David had helped to lead them to 
their places. He was dreaming of them as he 
lay on a pile of straw with a horse-blanket for 
his only covering. 

Suddenly a rough voice called, "Dave! 
Dave!" and he started up from his straw bed. 
"It's time to start. Are you going to lie there 
all day?" 

As he fastened his clothing, the loosening of 
which had been his only preparation for the 
night, David's lips quivered. The cold, his 

84 



THE BOY FOR WHOM NO ONE CAEED 85 

weariness of body, the glimpses he caught as he 
wandered about the town of other people's hap- 
piness — all were bad enough, but he could stand 
them if it were not for the dreadful loneliness 
of his heart. 

' ' If there were only one person in the world 
who cared for me!" he thought. "One person 
to whom it made any difference whether I came 
or went. That is all I ask." 

He found his fellow hostlers gathered to- 
gether eating their rough breakfast by the dim 
light of lanterns. They were soldiers, detailed 
for this duty, and were dressed in faded blue 
uniforms. All were hard-working, harshly- 
spoken men older than David. They did not 
mean to be unkind ; such treatment as they gave 
him was that to which they were accustomed. 

This morning the rough commands, the oaths, 
the prospect of riding out into the rain and 
being in a few minutes drenched to the skin 
seemed to David more dreary than ever. He 
had a hope which usually sustained him, the 
hope of continuing his education and becoming 
a preacher and perhaps a missionary; but this 
morning his sky was dark. He mounted his 
horse and rode out the gate directing with his 
voice a hundred poor, dispirited, patient beasts, 
some of whom still bore the healed or only par- 
tially healed scars of battle-wounds. 



86 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

By this time his misery was so keen that he 
said aloud, "If I only had someone to care for 
me!" 

There was no answer, and he rode on. 

Six years had passed and again the rain fell 
heavily. That which seemed miraculous had 
happened. David had gone to school; friends 
had been raised up for him, he had become a 
preacher and, still more wonderful, a mission- 
ary. He had gone, not to India as he had ex- 
pected, but to Liberia on the west coast of 
Africa. Liberia is a republic, founded as a 
home for colored people who wished to return 
from the United States to their native land. On 
the seacoast there was civilization, but only a 
little way inland the darkness of heathendom 
grew dense. Here David's church had a mis- 
sion, and here David and his wife had just 
arrived. 

The rain was not a steady winter rain like 
that into which he had ridden with his horses; 
it was much heavier, and it was also more ir- 
regular. For a half-hour the downpour shut 
out everything in sight; then the sun shone 
brightly, and in a few minutes a thick mist rose 
from the steaming earth. A little while and the 
same process was repeated, and so on all day 
long. 



THE BOY FOE WHOM NO ONE CAKED 87 

David and his wife left the little steamer 
which ran part way to the mission and walked 
up the path preceded by the bearers who car- 
ried their luggage. They expected to find a 
comfortable house with food in the larder pro- 
vided for them by their predecessor, who had 
had to return home on account of failing health. 

They saw only the path before them; they 
did not see bright eyes peering from among the 
dark leaves, glittering, bright eyes which looked 
like a queer variety of fruit or blossom. The 
eyes watched them cross the overgrown clearing 
before the mission house and climb the steps. 
The porters set down their loads, received their 
pay, and turned back into the wall of mist, and 
the two young people stood alone. The black 
eyes could not see the faces of the newcomers 
and did not dream of the consternation ex- 
pressed there. To them, the mission house, 
even in its present state, was a grand palace. 

David and his wife walked into the hall and 
saw that the rain had come through the roof, 
through the ceiling, clear down to the first floor. 
The departure of the last missionary had to be 
made so hurriedly that there had been no time 
to protect anything from moisture or from de- 
structive insects. The furniture looked unsafe, 
the walls were covered with mould, and there 
was naturally no food anywhere about. 



88 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

But they had brought some food with them, 
and they sat down on rickety chairs before a 
rickety table to eat. The sun which had shone 
so brilliantly for a few minutes vanished; there 
was a noise like thunder on the roof, and dark- 
ness fell with the rain, though night was still 
far away. As they ate, their spirits rose. 

"We are pioneers/ ' said Mrs. Day. 

"Not quite,' ' said David. "Pioneers do not 
have even as much of a roof as this. ' ' Suddenly 
he laughed and went to the side of the room 
where their luggage was stacked. He opened 
an umbrella and held it over Mrs. Day's head 
upon which the rain had begun to drip. "Nor 
umbrellas!" said he. 

Mrs. Day laughed, and her laugh made David 
for some strange reason sober. 

"Why, your eyes are full of tears !" said she. 
"There isn't anything to cry about!" 

David did not explain; he continued to eat 
with one hand while he held the umbrella with 
the other. His tears were not tears of sorrow, 
but tears of joy. Said he to himself : 

"I used to say, 'If only I had someone to 
care for me !' and now I have." 

But his heart was not at rest. When the sup- 
per was finished, he walked to the door and 
looked out. Again the thunder of the rain had 
ceased, the sun was shining brightly, and mist 



THE BOY FOR WHOM NO ONE CARED 89 

was rising from the earth. He could see with 
his mind's eye the thick jungle extending hun- 
dreds of miles away and growing darker and 
darker. It was not the thought of the jungle 
which troubled him, but of the inhabitants 
whose hearts were darker than their skins, 
darker than the shadows of night which would 
soon settle down. He had now a new question 
to trouble his peace. 

"What can one man do?" he said to himself. 

Ten more years passed, and this morning the 
sun shone clear and unclouded. The rains were 
over, and fine weather was certain for weeks 
to come. David remembered as he rose that 
the eleventh anniversary of his coming to Africa 
had passed unnoticed. He had an important 
matter on his mind and he dressed quickly and 
came and stood at the doorway of the mission 
house, waiting a little impatiently for his 
breakfast. 

The mission house had changed in appear- 
ance; the roof was sound and the floor safe to 
walk upon and there was comfortable furniture 
everywhere. Even more changed was the as- 
pect of everything without. It seemed as though 
on all sides the jungle had been pushed back and 
the sunlight had been let in. Before the mission 
house was a garden; near by stood a chapel; 



90 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

here were dormitories; there were workshops. 
Surrounding the mission grounds were planta- 
tions of coffee trees. 

Not only were there pleasant things to look 
at, but there were pleasant things to hear, the 
sound of children singing, the cheerful jingling 
of the breakfast dishes, and, above all, the soft 
pleasant splash of the waterfall in the river. 

There were even funny sounds. A pet mon- 
key sat on the porch railing and chattered at 
David — whom, by the way, we should now call 
Mr. Day. The poor monkey had yesterday 
learned a lesson which all naughty creatures 
must learn, to keep his hands away from that 
which did not belong to him. His aim in life 
was mischief; he liked to steal, to tear down 
pictures from the wall, to open ink bottles and 
smear ink over nice clean paper, or, better still, 
over paper which had been laboriously covered 
with reports. 

But yesterday, in hunting for ink, he had 
opened a bottle of strong ammonia. For a mo- 
ment he had been paralyzed by the fumes, then 
he coughed and sputtered and scolded and 
screamed and ran to the top of one of the tall 
palm trees in front of the house. He would 
never open any more bottles! He seemed to 
be saying so as he chattered. 

After breakfast a bell rang, and Mr. Day 



92 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

hurried to the chapel. It was time for prayers, 
and then he would get at his important task. 
He had, besides a loving heart, a good head, and 
he believed that it was not enough to teach men 
about Jesus and to persuade them to have faith 
in Him. One must also give them work to do 
so that their minds and hands might be occu- 
pied and they might be self-respecting and 
busy. Then the tempter would not be able to 
win them back to sin. 

Each boy and girl and each man and woman 
in the mission had a task. In the first place 
they went to school, and hundreds had learned 
to read the Bible, some so well that they could 
teach others. They did the work in the mission 
house and on the coffee plantations, they toted 
the baggage, and they farmed for themselves. 

Mr. Day not only believed that they should 
work, but he believed that they should have good 
tools and labor-saving devices just as the white 
people had, and this morning a long-looked-for 
steam engine was to be set in place. There was 
no use to try to have any other work done, or 
even to keep school. Mr. Day was excited, but 
he was the least excited of all the people for 
miles around. 

He conducted chapel soberly, and then he 
went down to the river, followed by a great 
crowd. There were little girls in neat gingham 



THE BOY FOR WHOM NO ONE CARED 93 

dresses and little boys in white cotton trousers 
and shirts and older folks who were also clean 
and neatly dressed. Behind them came another 
throng who lived near by, but who did not be- 
long to the mission. At their head was a chief 
who had fixed himself up for the occasion by 
borrowing all the clothing his friends owned. 
He wore shoes which were too tight, and con- 
sequently he took mincing, awkward steps. The 
rest of his wardrobe consisted of three heavy 
coats, the lower one very long, the upper one cut 
off so as to show the tails of the other two, and 
a high paper collar. 

Like all the rest, he was afraid of the large 
object which lay at the landing. Not much of 
it was to be seen through the crate which cov- 
ered it, but he could tell that it was black and 
dangerous looking. He muttered as he went 
along. 

' ' We no made for do dis ting. 'Merican man 
got dat sense. Country man too fool; no sava 
(know) dem ting called steam. Sava cook, sava 
eat, sava rice; but dis ting pass him." 

As they approached the river's edge, the men 
of the mission pressed forward to the side of 
Mr. Day, whom they called Daddy. They were 
very proud of their importance, but they were 
half afraid. Daddy was already fastening the 
ropes to the boat in which the engine rested. 



94 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

' ' Now, boys, pull her up ! ' ' lie called. 

There was giggling and laughing as a hun- 
dred hands laid hold on the ropes. There was 
also a great deal of boasting, such as boys do 
in our country. 

"Me strong man!" 

"Me pull powerful!" 

"Dis ting nosing! Me pull whole house." 

' ' Me pull whole tree down ! ' ' 

"Beady, all together!" called Daddy. 

In a few minutes the boat was high up on the 
sand beside a strong tripod of poles and the 
mission wagon which had been placed there. 
With still louder shouts the heavy box was 
swung into the wagon. There was laughter and 
more boasting. 

"Me pull strongest of all!" 

But now came the tug-of-war. The wagon 
sank deep into the soft soil and when it would 
not move, each black man let go the rope and 
began to shout reproaches at this mate. 

"You no work!" 

"You weak man!" 

"You little baby!" 

Daddy was for a moment in despair. Then 
his ever-ready smile returned, and he said to a 
bystander, "Get a drum." 

The drummer began to beat, the crowd began 
to sing, the boys and girls began to dance, and 



THE BOY FOR WHOM NO ONE CARED 95 

the wagon moved. The rope was so long that 
the women and children could take hold. In a 
little while the engine had come to the end of its 
long journey from York, Pennsylvania, to Muh- 
lenberg Mission, Africa. 

But it was not yet set up, and Mr. Day was 
puzzled. He stood earnestly reading the direc- 
tions, and then he began to give orders. He was 
so pressed upon by the crowd that he had to 
shout to them to stand back. 

A smart mission boy read the number on the 
engine. 

/'Him say, 'No two four one seven.' That 
him name. ' ' 

They were all so busy with their own thoughts 
that they did not see that the last section of the 
engine was in place and that Daddy had filled 
the boiler with water. 

Suddenly a black boy began to yell. 

" Daddy burn him engine up! Daddy burn 
him engine up!" 

Daddy smiled again and piled under the 
boiler the splintered wood from the crate. The 
fire grew hotter and hotter, the people forgot 
their fear and pressed closer and closer. 

Daddy was elated; for years he had prayed 
for this engine, and for months he had known 
that it was coming and had wondered whether 
he would be able to set it up and run it. Now 



96 UXDEE MANY FLAGS 

here it was, put together, and with the steam 
pressure mounting higher and higher. He could 
not express his joy, but he had something at 
hand which could. He supposed that this fine 
engine had a fine whistle and he opened the 
valve and set it off. 

Such a sound had never been heard in that 
part of the world. It was shriller than the 
monkey's chatter; it was more penetrating than 
the roll of the war-drums. Men, women, chil- 
dren — everybody — ran for the woods. Even the 
goats and the chickens fled. Daddy laughed and 
laughed, and presently they began to venture 
back. 

"How he live for (does he) holler?" asked 
one. 

"He shoot off wif he mouf !" 

"Daddy say he have biler. \Yhere de biler?" 

"Yonder de biler !" And half a dozen fingers 
pointed to the smoke-stack. 

Daddy let the fire go down and went back to 
the mission porch. It was almost noon, and the 
hot sun commanded all men with white skins to 
get under cover. He sat down to tell his friends 
in America that the engine was in place, and, as 
he wrote, he remembered his arrival at the mis- 
sion, its desolation, the sinking of his heart. 
His pen dropped from his fingers. 

One man had, after all, done a great deal. 



THE BOY FOR WHOM NO ONE CAEED 97 

Mr. Day had, after awhile, a new title, given 
to him by a college at home. First he had been 
Dave, then David, then he had been the Rever- 
end Mr. Day, then "Daddy," and now he was 
"the Reverend Doctor Day." Probably he liked 
"Daddy" best of all. 

He had ceased entirely as he grew older to 
think about other people caring for him; what 
he wished for was to care for other people. He 
had had many to love, the dear wife who worked 
with him, and two babies whom they conld only 
keep for a little while. Then there was Leila, a 
little daughter who was brought up in America. 
When she was nine years old she went to Africa, 
but lived only a short time. 

He had also hundreds, even thousands, of 
black boys and girls and men and women, those 
who came to the mission as children and mar- 
ried there and bought themselves little farms 
near by, and those who came and stayed only a 
little while and then went back to the jungle. 
Of these, some forgot all they had learned, ex- 
cept one thing, that here was a man who had 
come from so far away that they could not meas- 
ure the distance, simply to do them good. 

For twenty-three years Dr. Day worked on, 
almost without rest. Mrs. Day came home to 
America, worn-out, but with high courage to 
the end of her life. She would not let anyone 



98 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

say that she would not get well and that she 
could not go back and work with Dr. Day. 

"In Africa everything depends on how brave 
yon are. I expect to go back." 

Dr. Day saw many of the missionaries who 
came to help him fall by his side; he saw his 
first native helpers grow old and die, bnt he was 
as brave as Mrs. Day. 

"This is my work," he would say. "I need 
no rest. This is my place." 

In 1896 he came home. It was December, and 
more than thirty years had passed since that 
December day when he had started out in the 
bleak morning leading his poor horses. He 
traveled on a fast steamer, but it was clearly 
to be seen that before he reached the dock he 
would have started on another journey. The 
friends who came to meet him found only his 
tired body. 

But all over the country hearts ached and 
ached, from Maine to California and from Can- 
ada to Florida, and out in Africa there was 
mourning. It was hard to realize that this was 
the boy who, when he was young, had wished 
so desperately for "just one person to care for 
him." Now thousands cared for him. The 
explanation is very simple, so simple that any 
child can understand and can imitate him. It 
is this — he cared for others. 



VII 
UNDEK TWO FLAGS 

It was New Year's Eve in China, even though 
the calendar on Jennie Crawford's desk in the 
hospital in the city of Hanyang said, i l January 
31, 1911." Three years ago, she had left her 
home in Lynn, Massachusetts, to go to Hanyang 
because there were more nurses in the state of 
Massachusetts than in all the great Chinese 
Empire. 

"If I should live in China fifty years," she 
said to herself as she looked at her calendar, 
"I'd never get used to February first or any 
other day than the first day of January being 
New Year's Day. It seems so strange to have 
a different day every year and none of them 
January first." 

She walked to the window and looked out. 
The night was stormy. Loud peals of thunder 
startled the people who hurried along the 
streets, and occasional flashes of lightning il- 
luminated the crowds gathered there. 

"It's not a good sign for the New Year," said 
one old Chinese to another. "When it thunders 
on New Year 's Eve there will be a bad year ! ' ' 

"We must make sure tonight that the evil 

99 



100 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

spirits are all frightened away," answered his 
friend. "We must take no chances on any being 
left to get into the New Year." 

The two men joined the crowd who were beat- 
ing gongs and setting off firecrackers. Here 
and there Buddhist priests went up and down, 
urging the people to make just as much noise 
as possible. 

Inside the houses mothers were trying to 
rouse their sleepy children because, unless the 
whole family kept awake and very watchful, the 
evil spirits would get into the houses and stay 
all the year. When the sleepy children could no 
longer hold their tired eyes open, their mothers 
hurriedly fed them a vegetable with a bad odor 
so that the spirits might be frightened away. 

New Year's Day was clear and beautiful, and 
all China had holiday. The shops were closed, 
and the houses were decorated with strips of 
red paper inscribed with Chinese characters 
which meant "happiness," "long life," and 
other blessings. On most of the doors were 
pasted new pictures of idols. These were the 
"door gods" who were expected to frighten 
the evil spirits away. 

It was a busy morning for Jennie Crawford. 
As in most hospitals, there seemed to be more 
work than there were people to do it. She as- 
sisted with two operations, she made a visit to 



UNDER TWO FLAGS 101 

every bed, sometimes saying only a word of 
encouragement, but oftener lending a hand in 
a delicate dressing or superintending the bath- 
ing of a very ill patient. She was an expert 
nurse, and the poor women and children looked 
at her affectionately, knowing that when her 
tender hands were compelled to hurt them, it 
was because she loved them. 

As Miss Crawford looked down the street, 
she could tell the houses of Christians because 
on them were no hideous pictures, but, instead, 
beautiful verses from the Bible giving God's 
promise to care for those who trust in Him. 

Everyone goes calling on New Year's Day in 
China, and many callers came to bring good 
wishes to Miss Crawford. Little Mrs. Tsao, the 
wife of the Chinese Christian pastor, came 
early. Her hair was brushed until it shone like 
folds of black satin. 

' ' Oh, that the light of God may this year shine 
upon China just as the sun shines today!" she 
said. 

Next came Miss Crawford's Chinese teacher, 
who was so dressed up for the New Year that 
she scarcely knew him. He did not lift his hat 
as he came in, for that would have been most 
impolite. From the long, full sleeve of his coat, 
he took a package wrapped in . a yellow silk 
handkerchief. He unwrapped the package and 



102 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

handed one of his large, red paper calling cards 
to Miss Crawford. 

A procession of fifteen men from the Chris- 
tian Church came together. Their hair was 
plaited in long queues which hung down their 
backs. The queues were tied with long black 
silk tassels which almost touched the floor. All 
wore their longest and handsomest gowns. The 
bright red buttons on top of their black satin 
caps meant that they brought congratulations, 
for red is the color of happiness in China. Each 
man bowed very low and shook his own hand 
instead of Miss Crawford's to wish her a happy 
New Year. 

All day long the callers came and drank tea 
and ate Chinese sweets. In the evening Miss 
Crawford and her friend Jennie Cody, a teacher 
in the Bible School, sat down together. 

' i The people in Hanyang are learning to trust 
us and to really love us," said Jennie Crawford, 
happily. " Better still, they are learning to 
trust and love God. Did you notice how many 
of the doors had Bible verses over them today 
instead of those hideous gods! I'm glad every 
day that I came to China." 

" Would you still be glad if we had such fight- 
ing and riots here as they had across the river 
in Hankow last week?" asked Jennie Cody. 

Jennie Crawford laughed. "I've never had a 



UNDER TWO FLAGS 103 

chance to find out what I would do in a battle,' ' 
she said. "I'll tell you about that later." 

"Things look as if you might have a chance 
to find out very soon," said Jennie Cody. 

Presently a native Bible teacher came in and 
sat down with them. 

"We were talking about the rumors of war," 
said Miss Crawford. "Do you think there will 
really be a revolution?" 

i i There must be a revolution, ' ' she answered. 
"You Americans would never have had freedom 
to govern your own country if you had not had 
your revolution. It is even worse in China. 
Three hundred years ago the Manchus came 
from the north and took the government away 
from the Chinese, put a Manchu emperor on the 
throne, and made the yellow flag with its dragon 
the flag of China. They compelled the men of 
China to plait their hair in queues, and when- 
ever a Chinese man dared to cut off his queue, 
the soldiers of the emperor cut off his head. 
The Chinese want to be free to rule their own 
land as you do in America." 

"I wish that China was a republic like the 
United States, but I'm afraid I'd make a poor 
soldier in a revolution, ' ' said Jennie Cody. 

In October came rumors of riots and warfare. 
One evening as Jennie Crawford sat writing in 



104 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

her room in the school building, she heard a 
loud knocking at the door and a voice calling. 
There stood Jennie Cody holding up a letter. 
She had sped across the drill ground of the 
school and along the dark city wall to the hos- 
pital. 

"A letter has come from the father of a pu- 
pil/ ' she gasped. "He is a Chinese official and 
he says that there are rumors that a rebellion 
will start tomorrow." 

"We have heard many rumors of war," said 
Jennie Crawford. "This is only another.' ' 

The next day passed and the next and the 
next and still all was quiet. That night she 
slept without fear. 

Early the following morning a Bible woman 
came to her. "I've been up all night,' ' she 
said. "The people are fleeing to the country by 
hundreds, carrying on their backs bundles of 
bedding and clothing. All night there has been 
a procession leaving the city. They say that the 
revolution is beginning and that the hardest 
fighting will be in Hanyang because the guns 
and powder are stored here in the great arsenal, 
and both armies will try to capture that." 

Before noon another letter came. Jennie 
Crawford read it quickly. 

"The American consul says, 'All American 
women and children must leave Hanyang for 



UNDER TWO FLAGS 105 

a place of safety at once. Fighting has begun 
near by!' " 

Dr. Huntley, the physician in charge of the 
hospital, called a meeting of all missionaries. 

u We don't want to go," said Jennie Craw- 
ford. "The school is full of girls, and the hos- 
pital is full of patients. We don't want to leave 
them." 

It was agreed that the women and children 
in the hospital and the girls in the school would 
be safer at their homes. Jennie Crawford and 
the teachers found escorts for pupils and pa- 
tients, while Dr. Huntley went across the river 
to Hankpw to consult the British consul. 

"The missionaries in Wuchang thought 
they would not have to leave," said the consul. 
"Now the gates of the city have been closed. 
The American consul has been trying to get 
them out, but he cannot reach them. Fighting 
is going on all round the mission. You must 
get the American women and children out of 
Hanyang before the soldiers enter." 

Dr. Huntley hurried home. The frightened 
boatman did not want to wait a minute. As he 
stepped out of the boat, Dr. Huntley took out 
his watch. 

"It is twenty minutes after four," he said. 
"Promise me that you will wait here with your 
boat until five." 



106 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

The boatman promised, and the doctor hur- 
ried to the hospital. At the tea-table in the 
dining-room sat Mrs. Huntley with Jennie 
Crawford and Jennie Cody. 

"We have no choice, we must leave in thirty 
minutes,' ' announced Dr. Huntley. "Get to- 
gether a few things and take no more than you 
can carry." 

The half-emptied teacups left on the table as 
the women hurried from the dining-room were 
to remain there many days. Gathering up a few 
things, they started for the boat as the sun was 
setting. On a hill back of the hospital were six 
hundred soldiers of the Manchu Emperor. 

"They are likely to fire!" said one of the 
servants. 

But no gun was fired as the party went out. 
The boatman was waiting, although he trembled 
with fear. The river was rough, and the waves 
threatened to swallow the little boat, but it 
reached Hankow in safety. 

The city was crowded, and the only rooms to 
be found were in a poor little hotel. None of 
the party slept that night. 

"If you hear a signal in the night," they 
were warned, * ( it will mean, ' Danger ! Eise and 
dress V If there is a second signal, it will mean, 
'All gather near the gunboats V A third signal 



UNDER TWO FLAGS 107 

will mean, ' Great danger! American women 
and children get into the boats ! ' ' ' 

All night they listened, but they heard only 
the steady tramp, tramp of the guards who 
marched up and down the streets. 

In the morning a messenger called out, "The 
soldiers entered Hanyang in the night ! ' ' 

If the boatman had not waited, they would 
have been shut up in the city. 

"Rich Chinese men and women are paying 
much money to be let down over the walls in 
baskets, for the gates are closed, and no one 
can get out any other way," said the messenger. 

In the evening Jennie Crawford saw thirty 
girls coming down the street. 

"Here come the schoolgirls from Wuchang!" 
she cried joyfully. 

Each girl carried the few clothes she had been 
able to save tied up in a square of cotton cloth. 

"For two days and nights we were shut in 
the school building," said one. "The bullets 
flew all round, and we could see burning build- 
ings every way we looked. Then the rescue 
party reached us. We had our bundles all 
ready to leave at a moment's notice." 

They were very tired, yet they stood bravely 
round the walls of the room, for there were no 
chairs. Not one knew whether she had a home 



108 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

or any friends left, but not even the youngest 
cried or complained. 

' ' Extra ! Extra ! ' ' shouted a newspaper mes- 
senger as he carried his papers from house to 
house. " Twenty thousand troops on the way 
from Peking!" 

Jennie Crawford bought a paper and every- 
one gathered round her. 

" Twenty thousand of the Emperor's soldiers 
are on their way from Peking!" she announced. 
"The British and American consuls advise all 
foreign women and children to go on to 
Shanghai ! ' ' 

On to Shanghai they went that evening. The 
city was crowded with many refugees. At last 
they were safe with friends who were waiting 
for them there, and who gave them a glad 
welcome. 

But they did not stay in Shanghai. After a 
few days Dr. Huntley came into the sitting- 
room one morning with a paper in his hand. 

"The call has come for Eed Cross doctors 
and nurses to go to Hankow," he said. "The 
wounded soldiers of both armies are being taken 
there, and there is no one to care for them. I'm 
going to volunteer to return as a Red Cross 
surgeon." 

"I'll go with you as a Red Cross nurse," said 
Jennie Crawford. 



110 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

6 ' Take me, too ! ' ' begged Jennie Cody. 

1 'No Americans except doctors and nurses 
are allowed to enter the city," answered Dr. 
Huntley. 

Jennie Cody looked up at him. "The one 
thing I have said I never, never could be is a 
nurse, but I won't be a coward when Jennie 
Crawford needs help, and wounded soldiers 
have no one to nurse them. Pin the red cross 
on my arm and maybe that will give me cour- 
age.' ' 

When they bought tickets, the agent said, 
1 ' You go at your own risk. I can make no prom- 
ise that you will ever reach Hankow. Many 
boats are being fired on." 

But as the boat with the red cross on its white 
flag went up the river, the soldiers of both 
armies lowered their guns. 

Such a different Hankow they found! The 
crowded streets were deserted; even the beg- 
gars were gone. The smoke still hung over the 
ruins of many buildings which had been burned. 
The fire had not touched an unfinished hospi- 
tal, and in it they found many wounded soldiers. 
Most of the fighting was in Hanyang, and the 
Eed Cross launches brought the wounded men 
of both armies across the river. 

Two nurses were already there for day duty, 
so Jennie Crawford and Jennie Cody slept in 



UNDER TWO FLAGS 111 

the day and went on duty at night going up and 
down between the rows of soldiers like angels 
of mercy. There were few beds, and most of 
the men had to lie on straw on the floor with no 
sheets or pillows. 

" Which way will it go?" said Jennie Cody 
one day. 

"No one can tell," answered Jennie Craw- 
ford. "Just now the revolutionists are ahead. 
They have captured the arsenal in Hanyang. 
Three hundred of their soldiers went up to the 
gate with their clothes torn and looking as if 
they had been in a battle. They pretended to 
be the soldiers of the Emperor who had been 
defeated. The gate-keepers let them in, and 
they took charge of the arsenal without firing a 
single shot. Now the people are so sure the 
revolutionists will win that many men have al- 
ready cut off their queues. The soldiers with 
swords in their hands demand that men prove 
they are loyal to the new republic by having 
their queues cut off." 

"If we could only get back to Hanyang again 
to get some warm clothes !" sighed Jennie Cody. 
"I'm almost frozen without my winter coat." 

"Let's try to go over with Dr. Huntley in the 
Eed Cross launch," proposed Jennie Crawford. 
"None of the soldiers of either army will fire 
at that." 



112 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

When they reached Hanyang, they saw empty 
rickshaws along the river bank and many other 
signs of a hasty retreat. Before they reached 
their home, a man ran toward them. 

"You must be ready to leave at a moment's 
notice," he cried. "The soldiers of the Em- 
peror have taken the city again." 

In the dining-room the teacups still stood on 
the table, but they did not stop to put them 
away. Hastily gathering a few garments, they 
hurried back to the boat. 

Before the boat could pull out, the bullets 
were falling close beside them. Within half an 
hour a terrible battle was fought between the 
troops of the Emperor on the Hankow side of 
the river and those of the revolutionists on the 
other side. Nearer and nearer to the hospital 
came the bullets. One day the two nurses were 
awakened by the sound of shells directly over 
their heads. A bullet struck the wall of the 
room. Jennie Cody picked it up and with a 
smile that showed she was not afraid, put it 
away for a souvenir. The little Eed Cross 
launches brought in more and yet more wounded 
soldiers until the nurses could scarcely step 
between the beds of straw. Again and again 
bullets fell near by, but none struck the Amer- 
icans. 



UNDER TWO FLAGS 113 

"That is because the bullets were made by 
foreigners/ ' explained the Chinese. "They 
have eyes so they can see, and never hit the 
people who made them." 

After the troops of the Emperor had captured 
Hanyang, they took Hankow and Wuchang. 
It seemed that the revolution had failed and 
that the yellow flag with its Manchu dragon 
would still float above China. 

"Look at that man!" said Jennie Crawford 
one day. ' ' He cut off his queue when he thought 
the revolutionists had won. Then when the sol- 
diers of the Emperor recaptured the city, he 
was afraid they would cut off his head if they 
saw him without a queue, and he pinned one to 
his cap." 

"Many men have done that," answered Jen- 
nie Cody. "When they think the soldiers of 
the Emperor are going to win, they let their 
queues hang down their backs; then if they 
think victory is going to the revolutionists, 
they tuck them up under their caps." 

' ' The days may seem dark for the new repub- 
lic, but even though the arsenal has been cap- 
tured by the soldiers of the Emperor, good news 
comes from Shanghai and Nanking," said Jen- 
nie Crawford. "Everywhere the people are de- 
manding that China shall be free. Shanghai 



114 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

has been taken by the revolutionists without any 
fighting and Nanking has already been made the 
capital of the new government." 

Jennie Crawford's prophecy came true. 
When in 1912 New Year 's Day came to China, — 
this time on January first by law, — Mr. Sun 
Yat-Sen was inaugurated as the first president 
of the great Chinghwa (Chinese) Eepublic, and 
the dragon flag came down. Instead, there 
floated a rainbow flag with stripes of five colors 
to represent the five peoples of China. There 
was a red stripe for the Chinese, a blue stripe 
for the Mongols, a white stripe for the Moham- 
medans, and a black stripe for the Tibetans. 
Instead of killing all the Manchu soldiers and 
the boy emperor, the new republic put a fifth 
stripe of yellow in its flag for the Manchu peo- 
ple who were to be a part of the new republic. 

When the news reached the two nurses, Miss 
Crawford said to Miss Cody, "Now I can get 
back to my own hospital in Hanyang, to all the 
women and children who are waiting for me." 
But for many weeks they stayed to nurse the 
men who could not be moved. 

One day they received a command from Gen- 
eral Li Yuan Hung, vice-president of the new 
republic, to come to Wuchang, which was 
thronged with people from many nations, Eng- 
land, France, America, Germany, Russia, Italy, 



UNDER TWO FLAGS 115 

Japan, and Sweden. There the Vice-President 
presented to them bronze medals "in recogni- 
tion of their bravery and self-sacrifice, in caring 
for the wounded during the revolution. ' ' 

"I have almost forgotten the noise of battle 
and those days in the hospital/ ' said Jennie 
Crawford as they went back to Hanyang. * * But 
I can never forget that Chinese soldier who 
looked up at us one night as we tried to ease his 
pain, and said, 'You are like God to us.' 

" 'Oh, no,' I answered at once. 

" 'Well,' said he, as I smoothed his pillow 
of straw, 'you are the ones who make us know 
about God.' 

"Now I can answer you that I'm still glad I 
came to China. ' ' 



VIII 
SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 

On a cold November morning a group of girls 
stood beside two mules in front of a house in 
Batang on the border of Tibet. Two were 
Americans, and the others, Tibetans. 

"How long must you stay in America, 
Doris?" asked one of the Tibetan girls very 
sadly. 

"If I study hard every day," answered 
Doris, "I can come back in ten years." 

"That's not so bad," said another of the 
girls, "because, you see, if you will study night 
and day, you can get through and come back in 
five years." 

"We must go," said Dorothy. "Father and 
Mother have gone on a half -hour ago. ' ' 

There were tears in all eyes as Doris and 
Dorothy sprang into their saddles. 

"Good-by! Good-by!" they called as the 
mules started forward. 

Since they were babies, Doris and Dorothy 
Shelton had lived in Tibet, the land that is called 
"the roof of the world," because it is higher 
than any other country in the world. They had 
taken many trips, clinging to the backs of their 

116 



118 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

mules as they went almost straight up on the 
rough mountain roads, but the journey on which 
they were starting now, as the sun rose from 
behind the snow-capped mountains, was to be 
the most thrilling of all. 

They soon overtook their mother and father 
and the servants. In front of the party rode 
guards, for the country was full of robber 
bands. Then came six mule drivers driving the 
twenty-five mules that were loaded with tents, 
baggage, and food. Following the mule drivers 
Mrs. Shelton rode in a sedan chair fastened to 
two poles which rested on the shoulders of four 
carriers who wore fine, bright-red turbans and 
long robes of grey pulu or wool, which were tied 
about the waist. In the party were Andru, 
Drashi, and Shen-si, the three servants who had 
helped to care for Doris and Dorothy since they 
were babies. 

Last of all, on a mule strong enough to carry 
his two hundred and thirty pounds, rode Dr. 
Albert Shelton. Everyone in Batang knew 
"Big Doctor Shelton," and everyone loved 
him. 

Seventeen years before this time, when he 
left the medical school in Kansas, he looked over 
a map of the world to find the place that needed 
a doctor most. There was not a town in Kan- 
sas that did not have a doctor in it or near to it, 



SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 119 

and in some of the towns there were many 
doctors. 

' 'I should like to go to a place where there 
are no other doctors, " he said. 

"Well, then," said a friend, "go to Tibet. 
That is the place for you, because in all Tibet 
there is no doctor. But you may not get there 
alive. The Dalai Lama, who is the head of 
everything in Tibet, government and Buddhist 
Church, lives in Lhasa, the capital, and he will 
not let any Christian missionary or doctor come 
within the walls of his city. Some have tried 
to go, but most of them were killed.' ' 

The more Albert Shelton thought about the 
land without a doctor, the more he wished to go 
there. He talked to his young wife, and she 
wanted to go, too, so one day they took a 
steamer from San Francisco and crossed the 
Pacific Ocean to China where a boat carried 
them a thousand miles up the Yangtze Eiver. 
Then they went still farther on a little Chinese 
house-boat pulled by thirty men who walked 
along the bank. After the house-boat had gone 
up the river for nearly two months, they stepped 
off on shore and rode on the backs of mules for 
seven hundred miles. 

More than a year after they left Kansas, they 
reached the town of Tatsienlu on the border of 
Tibet. If they could have stuck a pin eight 



120 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

thousand miles long right through the earth, 
it would have come out not far from where they 
started. The nearest doctor was seven hundred 
miles away, so Dr. Shelton decided to live in 
Tatsienlu until he could find a way to get far- 
ther into the closed land of Tibet. 

Doris and Dorothy were born at Tatsienlu, 
among mountains that rose more than twenty 
thousand feet above the level of the ocean, so 
high that they were covered with snow in July 
and August. They were used to the strange 
little "yaks," — houses covered with goat's 
hair. They watched their father make brick 
and saw lumber and teach the men how to build 
houses like the one he had built for himself. 

After five years Dr. Shelton was permitted 
to go farther inland to Batang to start a hos- 
pital. When the people heard of the "good 
doctor" who had come so far across the ocean, 
and who could do such wonderful things to make 
sick people well, they came from all over the 
country to see him. At first he had to use for 
his operating table a door laid across two tables. 
Then he and his friends sawed lumber and 
baked brick and built a hospital. For ten years 
he lived at Batang, and many thousands of peo- 
ple came there to be helped. 

Then a wonderful thing happened — Dr. Shel- 
ton was to go into Lhasa, the capital of the land- 




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122 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

without-a-doctor. The Dalai Lama had kept out 
all missionaries because he was afraid the peo- 
ple would discover that their idols were not 
true gods and would not give the priests any 
more money. But now the Dalai Lama himself 
gave Dr. Shelton permission to come. 

Before going to Lhasa Dr. Shelton planned 
to take Mrs. Shelton and Doris and Dorothy to 
the port of Hongkong, from which they were to 
sail to America, where the girls were to go to 
school. It was on this journey that they were 
starting on this November morning. 

Mrs. Shelton did not want to say good-by to 
the people of Batang, whom she loved, so she 
tried to slip away before daybreak. But as she 
and the doctor rode along, they found people 
lined up on either side of the road to bid them 
good-by. Many had left their homes the night 
before and had marched ahead so they could 
stand by the road and see their "big doctor" 
and his wife and children once more. An escort 
of twenty-five boys had been sent ahead. All 
the way from Batang to the Yangtze Eiver, a 
journey of a day and a half, the people were 
gathered along the roadside. 

For thirty-six days Doris and Dorothy rode 
on their mules. Then they were so tired, their 
father got chairs for them and they were car- 
ried by the servants. 



SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 123 

One day as they were riding along, Dorothy 
said: 

"Are you afraid of robbers, Doris? I heard 
Andru and Shen-si say that Yang Tien-fu, the 
leader of a dreadful band must be near by. He 
is very angry at the government. He used to 
be a colonel in the Chinese army, but they 
didn't pay his salary, so he got a band of men 
to join him, and they live out in the mountains. 
Andru said they stop all travelers and take pay 
from them." 

" I'm not afraid, ' ' said Doris. ' ' We have sol- 
diers to guard us." 

"I'm glad we are almost at Yunnanfu. Forty- 
seven days is a long time to ride. Father says 
we will be at Yunnanfu in just two and a half 
days." 

Suddenly, as the mules came out from behind 
a bend in the road, they threw back their ears 
and stopped. The report of a pistol rang out. 

"Bobbers! Robbers!" shouted the soldiers. 

Another pistol shot followed, and the robbers 
sprang down through the brush of the mountain- 
side. There was a crashing of glass, as a bullet 
struck the thermos bottle by Mrs. Shelton's 
side. 

"Bobbers! Bobbers!" shouted the four sol- 
diers again. One shot off his gun;. then all four 
ran back to the village. 



124 TJNDEB MANY FLAGS 

Mrs. Shelton and the girls crept out of their 
chairs and slipped over the bank into the ditch 
below. 

Bullets flew. The bandits surrounded Dr. 
Shelton; one drew a large pistol and another 
a great sword. Dr. Shelton saw there was no 
chance to escape, so he let them take from him 
his field-glasses, his camera, and everything 
else they wanted. Andru was seized and his 
knife and chop-sticks taken from his belt. Hold- 
ing up Dr. Shelton by both arms, two of the 
bandits led him up the mountain to their chief. 
The others tried to get Mrs. Shelton to climb 
the bluff which rose straight before them, but 
she was not able. Then they tried to carry her, 
but they could not get up the steep, narrow 
path with a load. 

Doris wore gloves, but little Dorothy's hands 
were bare. The robbers saw her rings and took 
them off her fingers. Dorothy loved those rings 
which had been given to her by her friends, and 
she began to cry. Doris had been very much 
frightened by the robbers, but when she saw 
one of them with Dorothy's rings, she forgot 
about herself and going up to the robber said : 

"You give those rings back to Dorothy!" 

The robber smiled at the girl who was so 
brave for her little sister and actually handed 
the rings back. 



SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 125 

By this time the soldiers returned with other 
soldiers and rushed out to attack the robbers, 
who left Mrs. Shelton and Doris and Dorothy 
and began fighting to defend themselves. At 
once the two girls with their mother and the 
servants slipped back to the village. 

Meanwhile Dr. Shelton was being hurried 
along up the mountainside to the robber chief. 
Taller and stronger than any of the men who 
stood about him was Yang Tien-fu. He looked 
with interest at the things his men had taken 
from the travelers and examined Dr. Shelton's 
camera and field-glasses. 

"How can this picture-box make pictures?" 
he asked. "Now stop and make my picture." 

Dr. Shelton snapped the kodak. 

"Now take my picture out of the box and let 
me see it." 

"There is no picture there yet," said Dr. 
Shelton. 

Yang Tien-fu would not believe him and made 
him open the camera and spoil the first picture 
of a robber chief he had ever had a chance to 
take. 

Dr. Shelton could look down to the valley and 
watch the battle between the bandits and the 
soldiers. He saw Mrs. Shelton's empty chair. 

"Why do you want to take me as a pris- 
oner ?" he asked. 



126 UNDEE MANY FLAGS 

"Because I must have money," answered the 
bandit. 

"I have no money," said Dr. Shelton. 

"But your people will offer me a ransom. I 
have plenty of soldiers in my land, but they 
have little to fight with. I will tell your people 
that if they will send me fifty thousand dollars' 
worth of guns and powder and bullets I will 
release you. And that is not all. The govern- 
ment has taken my family and is keeping them 
as prisoners. I will tell them that if they will 
send my family back to me, I will send you back 
to them. Get on your mule, for we must travel 
far from here." 

Over the rough, steep road of the mountain 
they rode for many hours. Not until the sun 
went down did they stop to rest and to wait for 
their companions. They built a fire and cooked 
rice. After they had eaten, they took out their 
long pipes and smoked opium. Dr. Shelton 
counted seventy-one men. 

When those who had stayed to fight the sol- 
diers overtook the band, Dr. Shelton saw that 
one man was shot through the ankle. He opened 
his saddle-bags and dressed the wound while 
Yang Tien-fu watched with interest. After 
resting a few hours they started to travel again. 

For three days and nights Dr. Shelton did not 
take off his clothes or sleep. Sometimes he lay 



SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 127 

down on an old horse blanket, the only bed he 
had. Four robbers guarded him. They never 
took off the belts in which they carried their 
guns and cartridges. Dr. Shelton counted nine- 
teen different kinds of guns and eight kinds of 
pistols, all of which had been taken from trav- 
elers. 

Day after day the bandits traveled over the 
mountains. When they stopped, forty guards 
were sent in every direction, for Yang Tien-fu 
knew that the government had offered a reward 
of five thousand dollars to anyone who would 
capture him dead or alive. 

Sometimes he divided his men, sending a 
party to march straight down over the steep 
mountainside to make a false trail, and often 
he stood on some high bluff and laughed as he 
watched the soldiers being led astray. Almost 
every day, and sometimes many times a day, the 
bandits would stop a company of travelers and 
take their money or go into a little village and 
rob the frightened people. 

If the villagers gave them what they asked 
for, there was no fighting. Yang Tien-fu would 
go into the temple, which was the meeting place 
of the people, and send his men out to find one 
of the head men of the village. When he came 
in, the chief would say: 

"We are not robbers. We are traveling to 



128 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

escort this great foreign official. He must 
have two hogs and ten bushels of rice." 

Then the head men would look at Dr. Shel- 
ton with great respect and interest and start 
off to get all the things the great foreign of- 
ficial must have. Meanwhile Dr. Shelton tried 
to get them to understand that he was a pris- 
oner. Often he had to smile at the cunning of 
the robber chief. 

As they went along, Dr. Shelton saw many 
people who were sick and many whose eyes 
were sore or blind. He said to Yang Tien-fu, 
"I left America to help the sick people in 
Tibet. Since you are keeping me away from 
my hospital in Batang, you must let me have 
a hospital along the road." 

So the chief waited while the doctor healed 
the sick. Many soldiers joined the band, and 
the doctor ministered to all who needed him. 

One day the chief said, "You are an honest 
man. I want you to be one of my men and stay 
with us. These other felloAvs can't be trusted. 
Even our treasurer steals. Stay with us and 
be the pastor and the doctor for me and my 
men. I will pay you twelve thousand dollars 
a year and give you half of it right now." 

Dr. Shelton chuckled. He wondered whether 
anyone else had ever been invited to be the 
pastor of a robber band. 



SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 129 

Back in Yunnanfu Mrs. Shelton, Doris, and 
Dorothy waited. Every day the girls went to 
the gate of the city, hoping to see a runner 
coming with a message from their father. 

"But, Doris,' ' said Dorothy, "there is no 
chance for Father to escape. He is guarded 
all the time." 

"The Bible says that Paul and Silas were 
sleeping right between guards, and God opened 
the doors of the prison," said Doris. "If we 
pray, God may open some door so Father can 
escape." 

Thus while the robber band was climbing 
the steep mountain and leading their tired 
prisoner farther and farther away, two little 
girls knelt down to pray. 

For nearly three weeks no message came. 

"If we could only know if Father is still 
living and if he is well!" said Mrs. Shelton. 

"Yes," said Doris. "Or if we could get a 
message to him so he could know we are pray- 
ing for him!" 

One day Shen-si, the Chinese cook who had 
lived with them many years, said : 

"I will carry your message to my master 
and bring his message to you." 

"How can you find him, Shen-si?" asked 
Dorothy. "How will you get past the chief of 
the bandits!" 



130 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

"I will face Yang Tien-fu and carry your 
message to my master and bring Ms message 
to you," said Shen-si quietly. 

Mrs. Shelton and the girls wrote letters and 
Shen-si started out to find his master. All 
along the way he followed the robbers, asking 
questions until he reached the place where he 
was told his master was. He went boldly up to 
the guards. 

"I come on important business,'' he an- 
nounced. "I must speak to your chief." 

The guards led him to Yang "Tien-fu. Be- 
hind the chief he saw his master, so changed 
that he scarcely knew him. A long beard had 
grown over his smooth face, and he was so 
weak he could scarcely walk. Tears came into 
Shen-si 's eyes. 

Dr. Shelton was allowed to send a message 
back, and he handed Shen-si a copy of Beside 
the Bonnie Brier Bush to take to Mrs. Shel- 
ton. This he had had in his saddle-bags when 
the robbers captured him. On the margins he 
had written daily messages to his wife. One 
of the last was: 

"I am tired to death; all I can say in my 
desolation is, 'Make Thy grace sufficient for 
me, God.' " 

With the precious book Shen-si started back. 

Shen-si was not the only one who had de- 




§ 

o 

O 

CO 

Q 



•6 



132 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

termined to reach Dr. Shelton. One day Yang 
Tien-fu said to his prisoner: 

"The government has sent a messenger to 
me to say that my family is at the priest's 
house and that if I will send you there in ex- 
change, my family will be given to me. I am 
almost afraid to trust them, for they do not 
keep their word as you do, but I am going to 
send you to the priest's house with a strong 
guard." 

Twenty of the robbers took Dr. Shelton to 
the priest's house. There Yang Tien-fu found 
only his wife and mother. 

"What do two women amount to?" he said 
angrily. "I can buy another wife as good as 
that one for a hundred dollars any time. Have 
them bring me my son." 

A contract was prepared promising Yang 
Tien-fu that if he would release Dr. Shelton, 
the Chinese government would give him par- 
don for himself and his men, make him an 
officer in the army, return all his family to him 
and give him the arms and ammunition for 
which he had asked. On the next day the con- 
tract was to be signed by him and by the 
Chinese governor. 

Late at night some of the men, who had been 
out watching, hurried to the chief. 

"The government has you in a trap," they 



SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 133 

said, "many troops of soldiers are stealing in 
quietly to surround you and capture you." 

Quickly Yang Tien-fu took both his family 
and Dr. Shelton, and at midnight they slipped 
out between the circles of soldiers, back to the 
mountains. Again began the long, hard jour- 
neys. Soon Yang Tien-fu saw that his pris- 
oner was too weak to walk or even to sit on his 
mule, so he had a rough chair made for him. 
For thirty-seven hours they carried him, run- 
ning as fast as they could, for the soldiers were 
following. One day the chief said: 

"The doctor is so sick and weak he can go 
no farther. Take him to the loft of that barn 
and hide him in the straw. Place four guards 
with him. If he dies, hide his body where no 
one will find it; if he gets well, send a mes- 
senger to me, and I will come for him." 

The men made a tunnel through the rice- 
straw to the back of the loft, digging out a 
space large enough for a bed for the doctor at 
the end. They took a brick out of the wall to 
make a small hole for a window. As they 
dragged their sick prisoner into his straw 
house, one of them said: 

"The 'big doctor' is the same as a dead 
man." 

The newspapers all over the world had 
printed the story of Dr. Shelton 's capture by 



134 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

the robbers, and day by day people in many 
lands waited to hear that the governor and his 
soldiers had caught Yang Tien-fu and released 
Dr. Shelton. One day the American Minister 
at Peking started a rescue party of several 
English and Americans with troops. They sent 
a message to Yang Tien-fu demanding the re- 
lease of Dr. Shelton ; then they started into the 
mountains to find him. When they left, Doris 
and Dorothy went with them to the gate of the 
city. 

Meanwhile the "big doctor,' ' almost too 
weak to move, was lying on his bed of straw, 
with his head by the little window. 

"Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Mon- 
day," — he counted the days as they went by. 

An old Chinese man brought him rice, and the 
rest and food made him feel so much better 
that the men who were guarding him slipped 
off to tell the chief he was not dead, leaving 
the Chinese to guard him. Late one afternoon 
the old man cried out in terror, "The soldiers 
are coming !" and ran as fast as he could. 

Dr. Shelton crawled to the street and called 
to the Chinese runner who had so frightened 
his guard. The villagers had heard the cries, 
"The soldiers are coming!" and had run to 
the hills. When the messenger found out that 
the man who stood before him was the "big 



SIXTY-SIX DAYS WITH BANDITS 135 

doctor," he was almost as frightened as the 
villagers. 

As soon as he could get his breath, he helped 
the doctor to escape. Leaning on his deliv- 
erer's arm, Dr. Shelton crept along for a quar- 
ter of a mile to the next village. There was no 
horse on which he could ride and no chair on 
which he could be carried, but eight men of 
the village were persuaded to help. They 
twisted ropes of wild grass and tied them about 
the doctor's waist. Some men lifted, some 
pushed, and some pulled on the ropes until 
they reached the next village, which was fortu- 
nately a Christian village. The people met 
them with joy. They were afraid to stop long 
for fear the robbers would overtake them, so 
they slept for only an hour and then started on. 

They found two small ponies, and at half- 
past four in the morning they offered a prayer 
that God would take care of the "big doctor," 
and lifted him to a pony's back. He was so 
weak that two men had to hold him on. When 
one pony was tired, they lifted him to the other. 

Presently Dr. Shelton looked up and saw 
two hundred soldiers approaching, and soon 
recognized his friends. He heard English 
spoken for the first time in sixty-six days, and 
he could not speak for joy. One of the rescue 
party had a box of crackers. He ate them at 



136 UNDER MANY FLAGS 

once, because since he was captured, he had 
had nothing but rice. His friends had to lend 
him clothes, for his were worn out. 

At the gate of Yunnanfu five hundred people 
came to welcome Dr. Shelton home. First and 
foremost were two little girls who ran to put 
their arms round his neck and whisper, "We 
prayed for you! We prayed for you! The 
Lord does answer prayers, doesn't he?" 

Dr. Shelton patted the two heads. 

"Of course he does," he said. "That is why 
I am here." 



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